1. Fledermaus Can't Get It
2. Rhinohead
3. Flooded
4. Family Feud
5. Serious Brainskin
6. Speech Contamination/ German Fear Of Osterreich
7. Young The Faceless And The Codes
8. Duckrog
9. Chicken Yiamas
10. That Sound Wiped
11. Jbak Lois Lane
12. Dearest Friends
It must be fantastic being Domino Records and
having the space, the scope and the vision to release
albums like Von Südenfed's Tromatic Reflexxions, which
teams Mark E Smith, distinctive-voiced uber-prolific
mainstay of The Fall with electronic beat
meisters Jan St Werner and Andi Toma of Mouse On
Mars.
Discoing up arch punk miserablist and
Gollum-lookalike Smith is a completely bonkers idea. It
should be enough to convince you that whoever first
suggested it must have eaten a few too many disco
smarties before coming to the meeting, but it does
work, as those of you who remember the 2005 release
Wipe That Sound, on which Smith first teamed up with
the MoM lads, will remember.
Opening track and preceding single Feldermaus Can't
Get It sets the scene, with its steady and repetitive
dance beats under Smith's unmistakeable vocal, and by
second track The Rhinohead you really can see yourself
heading to the centre of the clubland dancefloor, a
territory you would never have suspected belonged in
the same sentence as Mark E Smith.
Flooded, which retells the dream in which a rival
DJ nicked St Werner's slot and he flooded the club in
revenge sounds like the bizarre lovechild of The
Revolution Will Not Be Televised and a house anthem
that's had all its lights turned out and replaced with
lava lamps. Speech Contamination/German Fear Of
Osterreich stomps along with a bass line beat even
Smith would die for.
The Young The Faceless and The Codes is not only a
title that compels you to form a band so that you can
nick it for your name but also has you wondering
whether or not you've accidentally necked a disco
smartie yourself without noticing it, and have
imagined the whole thing, while the final two tracks -
the dark, brooding electronica of Jback Lois Lane and
the jaunty, almost blues-folk of Dearest Friends -
shows the full range of musical styles this unholy
trinity is capable of producing.
In many ways, this is one of those collaborations
that works precisely because all logic known to man
says it shouldn't. Like Arctic Monkeys swapping
riffs with Girls Aloud, the more disparate the
parts, the more likely the sum is to add up to
something you'd never expect could be this good.
With 25 studio albums behind him, Smith doesn't
need to whore himself to 21st century Euro
electronica, and Mouse On Mars are unlikely to bring
many old punks into their field of influence just by
utilising his vocals, so there's no ulterior motives
at play here. And anyway, with 15-odd years of their
own career behind them, it's only next to immortal old
troubadours like Smith that Mouse on Mars could ever
look like the new kids on the block. The fact that
neither side needs the other is why Tromatic
Reflexxions works so obscenely well.
Apparently, there's a second album in the works
already, as well as live festival performances to look
out for over the summer months. With grindie already
dirtying the boundaries of our favourite genres, is
the world ready for garage dance? Maybe not, but we'll
have fun spinning the decks in the meantime.