Mouse on Mars - Dimensional People

[Lada Laika]

still one of my favorite records of the year

[Hugh Mughnus]

 

 

I like it

still one of my favorite records of the year

 

yeh me too, really nice. Nice flow to it as an album as well not just single tracks.

[Lada Laika]

 

I like it

 

still one of my favorite records of the year

yeh me too, really nice. Nice flow to it as an album as well not just single tracks.

yeah whenever I listen to a track or two from it I end up coming back and listening to it as a whole. it almost feels like one long track with movements and such

[Extralife]

Yep I’m firmly in the like camp.

[GraveGlitcher]

In my top 3 for AOTY

[kieselguhr kid]

ok so i didn't like this at all when it came out, but relistening now... it's really good.

[dr lopez]

not really tho

[thumbass]

This album didn't do anything for me. MOM has cooled on me quite a bit over the years

[Limo]

I love MoM, and their later albums have really been growers unlike the instant gratification of their early work, but Dimensional People is just too ... easy, I guess. Not worthy of the MoM moniker.

[dr lopez]

hey for the few people who claim to "love this" or even like it, can you maybe go in depth on why you feel this way? I'm trying to hold back a 3,000 word post on why this record is really disappointing and a bit shit, and i'd like to hear a different take so I can then respond to it with said 3,000 word post. 

[kieselguhr kid]

14 hours ago, dr lopez said:

hey for the few people who claim to "love this" or even like it, can you maybe go in depth on why you feel this way? I'm trying to hold back a 3,000 word post on why this record is really disappointing and a bit shit, and i'd like to hear a different take so I can then respond to it with said 3,000 word post. 

well as i said, i wasn't too enthusiastic about it at first, and i'm still not 100% sure what to think of it, but my recent relistening made me appreciate it some more (on good headphones, which helped a lot i guess). one particular problem might be that the opening tracks are the weakest and make it kinda hard to get into this. plus one might say there is a certain overabundance of middle-aged white MOR-indie types on the line up here, which makes it a bit suspicious.

on the plus side, i think the interplay of acoustic/instrumental and electronic elements works really well. I've always been a fan of that strain in their work and I'd say i generally prefer ambient/post-rock MoM to dancefloor MoM; and some of the tracks here would easily fit in on Idiology (my favourite). and i find the mixing and production in general extremely well done.

I also enjoyed Paeanumnion quite a lot, which goes in a similar direction, have you heard that?

 

new album is in the works too

 

 

 

 

[kieselguhr kid]

^ edit: looking forward to your rant though

[dr lopez]

thanks - 

 

Things I will agree with: Opening of the album is not great. Or rather, the end of the album is stronger. I would say the three or so tracks in the middle are very weak and hitting them after the so-so start was a real nail in the coffin on initial listens. Also agree on the mixing and general production. It's excellent, as is expected. I have just now listened to the FLACs on my sennheisers with my decent-to-good sound card. Then I did the vinyl on the hifi. They both sound good. I've never been worried that MoM would fuck up the balance of acoustic and electronic instrumentation. Idiology proved that almost 20 years ago.

 

One pithy thought would be that this is not an album to go into blind, even as a MoM fan. It is my understanding that this album grew out of an musical installation project for an experimental art/music festival in Eau Claire, WI. The numerous collaborations were part of that. Imagining the slower parts of this album and the annoying vocal "ahh" samples as a spatial musical exhibit allow it a little more leeway with me. BUT- that is also a bit of a drawback to the album's perception generally, for casual MoM fans or to anyone who just presses play on Spotify. 

The featured artists are another corollary to that issue. I do not want to minimize the creative energy and joy that collaborations with different artists can bring. It's fairly obvious from the music, and watching that EB video confirms that they all had a grand old time feeding off each other. They kept the sessions loose and improvisational. I think this style of music-making and mutual back-scratching is totally natural for MoM at this stage in their career. They're less interested in the hyper controlled, obsessive, no element out-of-place style of electronic music production that was exemplary in their earlier albums. Of course, my personal preference is on the Autoditacker approach, but that doesn't mean that I'm can't be swayed in the other direction, and there are a few (!) moments on this album where i think the parts coalesce into something more.

Generous lopez time is over. I take major issue with whom they chose to collaborate. Looking at the track listings I didn't recognize any of the collab names, save swam dogg (although I wasn't that familiar with his music) So in a sense, I actually went into this album blind, without the knowledge of these musicians' other work. I didn't find any of the obvious contributions from the non-MoM people to be worth it, in any way. The lazy lyrics and 21st century hip-hop singing style of the amanda blank and spank rock verses, the I WASS I WAS I WAS on parliament of aliens part I, (lol so cringey) and swam dogg just sort of mumbling into a mic about this and that... it all seriously detracts from the music.

Looking up some of these names and realizing that they are, as you said, middle-aged indie-MOR types makes me even less inclined to enjoy it. I'm left wondering why Jan and Andi wanted to work with these people. One possibly explanation could be the electronic bubble of Berlin. A city CRAMMED with electronic music talent could leave open-minded artists like MoM wanting a change of musical scenery and the earnest, midwestern indie types certainly provide that. A lot of my native berliner friends love Bright Eyes and Beirut - to them, techno and electronic music is for clubbing. As an american who grew up in the town where secretly canadian, plan-it-x and jagjaguwar are all based, I have open resentment for this shit and my love of european electronic music is an obvious rebellion against what was status quo in high school and beyond. Enough about me, I'm rambling, but these are all factors in explaining why I was disappointed by this album. 

TL;DR - Collaboration albums are difficult to pull off, and when your assembled team make, in my opinion, boring and uninteresting music, the result is going to be a mess. Rhythmically this album is very poor, which is something MoM are usually so great at, even when they're not making their more "dancey" music. It's all just a fail, even with some decent moments in the last 3 tracks. We can all agree that Idiology is better than this by a country mile. I give this album a C-. Does anyone want to buy my vinyl lol

Edited August 27, 2019 by dr lopez

[NI64]

Guessing it was this festival?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.stereogum.com/2004811/eaux-claires-2018-disappointment-justin-vernon/news%3famp=1

 

Sounds like the whole thing was based around experimental collaboration and was not received well.

[dr lopez]

that festival sounds like my personal, private nightmare

 

edit: also found this gem from a hit or miss round-up: 

Quote

Miss: Mouse on Mars

Mouse on Mars began their set late Friday night, and many seemed confused. The German electronic duo sounded like noise that no one really seemed sure how to react to. A Google search showed the duo described as "intelligent dance music." Hoards of people left during the set,  much earlier than folks have in past years.

lol

Edited August 27, 2019 by dr lopez

[dr lopez]

anyone find the "rap verse" in affected AAVE intonations on "Foul Mouth" to be really cringey bordering on problematic? All the vocalists on that track are some redneck white bread chickenshit motherfuckers

[Lada Laika]

2 hours ago, dr lopez said:

anyone find the "rap verse" in affected AAVE intonations on "Foul Mouth" to be really cringey bordering on problematic? All the vocalists on that track are some redneck white bread chickenshit motherfuckers

Amanda Blank has been collaborating with Spank Rock since 2006. You’re looking for controversy where there is none. You don’t like the album, we get it. Why keep bringing it up?

[kieselguhr kid]

new album upcoming; gonna start an own thread once more details are announced

 

[thumbass]

Thanks for the heads up. Dimensional People didn't do it for me, I hope this one'll catch my ears better

 

[Limo]

30 minutes ago, kieselguhr kid said:

new album upcoming; gonna start an own thread once more details are announced

 

Here’s to hoping. Thanks for the heads up!

[kieselguhr kid]

On 8/24/2020 at 6:52 PM, kieselguhr kid said:

new album upcoming; gonna start an own thread once more details are announced

 

new album update (sort of):

 

[IDEM]

1 hour ago, kieselguhr kid said:

new album update (sort of):

 

Finally, the announcement of the announcement! Exciting!

[dr lopez]

reading this thread im like damn some good posts! then i saw they were mine and bobdobs lel

 

anyway..................... i guess anything can be better than this last nightmare. onward and upward! 

[Hugh Mughnus]

As much as I still enjoy dimensional people, I’d be over the moon if we got a straight up electronic album ala parastrophics? If they kinda alternated between concept albums and straight electronics that would be amazing. Isn’t that kinda what they’ve been doing anyways? 

Ah no I got my timelines wrong. I thought 21 again was before parastrophics sorry.

What is this wretch dubbed release from 2013? I’ve never seen it before.