Parastrophics

The mighty mouse returns after a six year hiatus. Several albums, numerous side projects and an album with Mark E Smith, the pairing of Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma have more recently relocated to Berlin resulting in Mouse on Mars' latest full-length Parastrophics, which is released via Modeselektor's Monkeytown imprint. The record channels a lifetime of sonic influences - dancehall, IDM, gabba, electro, and world music into a hyper-kinetic world where nothing is constant and fragments of sound tumble over themselves to earn your attention. Figuratively turning almost everything up to 11 this rapid churn of styles is brutal and disorientating. Yet still it remains intriguing and exciting with the album repaying repeated listen in order to fully appreciate it's multitude of sonic ticks. Taking everything from acid and breakbeat to electro and slow jams and chucking them all in the mix to jostle for attention gives the potential for an album pulled under by it's own weight. If anything Parastrophics is the opposite. Fragments of ideas are to be explored and then discarded with relatively pedestrian club sounds filling the spaces until the next curve ball. Still when it shines, which is more often than not, the album is an inventive assault on the senses that fills the spectrum with frequencies that are embedded with the power of movement. Serious about the fun they are having, Toma and St.Werner have not exactly broken the mould on their 11th album but then again I am not sure they were ever using one in the first place.