TORTOISE / MOUSE ON MARS
London Electric Ballroom
Mouse On Mars take to the stage and the surroundings begin to fade, as the music builds and then rips away into the stratosphere... They deal in a pretty cool technofied space dub drone-rock kind of sound swamp. And it’s a swamp that sits there bubbling and gurgling before belching out a big cloud of notes and harmonies that singe yer ears. You see, MOM have managed to create little soundscapes that groove along and really make the most of a melody before bursting out of it at exactly the right moment - ie just as it seems they might be heading for a techno/space dub drone-rock rut. The end product then is this total trip of jagged leaps and smooth grooves mixed into a thought-provoking set - it’s far from perfect, even a little cheesy at times, but it’s pretty damned interesting.
Which is kind of unfortunate for Tortoise in some ways. I never know quite what to make of them anyway - sometimes their swirling yet precise meanderings are quite simply blissful for me, and other times they just wash over. Tonight it seems that they never quite take it to that next step when they should. For all the shimmering and flowing, the surges are too few and too tardy. What I’m saying is that grooves are cool so long as they go somewhere. Following Mouse On Mars illustrates perfectly the lack of true dynamism in the mid-length songs. Nice poly-rhythms and all but where’s the breaks to steal my breath? Not only that, but the set seems remarkably similar to the one they played when I last saw them a year and a half ago (an occasion that sucked me in and blew me away, for your information). All that said, there were moments when they touched on the glories I know they can produce and I started to lift and float into a simultaneously distracted and totally focussed state of mind. Tortoise will always have that power to soothe and absorb you, it’s just when they fail to keep you hooked you start to worry that they’re not quite doing enough.
