Jan St Werner and Andi Toma AKA Mouse On Mars pick the first and last records they bought and the one they turn to in an emergency
FIRST
Holger Hiller
‘Oben Im Eck’
(Mute, 1986)
Hiller had been the frontman of German new wave avant-garde group Palais Schaumburg and his solo work surpassed the radical pop approach of his band. ‘Oben Im Eck’ was a strange Dada-esque sample collage Stravinsky, Negativland, Japanese kodo drums, door slamming, electronic buzz, he perfectly cut and edited everything using an E-MU sampler. Of course, we were using an E-MU when we started producing our own music.
LAST
Tsege Mariam Gebru
‘Spielt Eigene Komposition’
(Mississippi/Change, 2012)
Tsege Mariam Gebru is an Ethopian nun performing her own piano compositions. We like piano music by people like Poulenc, Debussy, Gurdjieff and Mompou and often use one in our recordings. Gebru’s pieces are calm and soothing, but also twisted, melancholic and idiosyncratic. Gebru is not really considered a classical music composer, but her work totally stands the comparison though.
ALWAYS
Various Artists
‘Musique Concrète 1959 N° 1 ‘
(BAM, 1959)
Our favorite track from this famous seven-inch EP is Ferrari’s ‘Étude Aux Accidents’. Ferrari produced numerous classic recordings that still sound completely modern. His harsh cut-up work is hinting towards breakbeats and time-stretching, which at that time, was unheard of. We performed a canon of electronic music masterpieces at Cologne’s WDR radio venue in 2014 s well as our own composition ‘De Umbris Idearum’ with Ensemble Musikfabrik. For Ferrari’s piece we just played this record. It sounded great through the big PA system.
