Available on: Monkeytown LP
More than a decade after his first Siriusmo 12″ (‘Ne Me Quitte Pas’ – released in 2000) the elusive Moritz Friedrich has finally released a full-length album. Dubbed Mosaik, this album is exactly what it says it is, an engaging 17-track collage that shows the value of taking the time to get things right.
As you might expect from a graduate of the Boysnoize label, currently signed to Modeselektor’s Monkeytown Records, Siriusmo is well schooled in the funkier end of Electro. The opening ‘High Together’ follows Justice in the kindergarten-sampling stakes, but doesn’t grate in the way that ‘D.A.N.C.E.’ and ’90s “kiddie rave” can.
The intense ‘Feromonikon’ skilfully blends filter house and fidget with a nod to Phantom of the Opera style melodrama. Elsewhere, ‘Mosaik’ has the lightness and brightness of bubbles dancing in UV rays. Yet, while such numbers show Siriusmo’s mastery of dancefloor populism, it is the more outlandish tracks and touches that really set Mosaik apart from the average producer’s album. ‘Sirimande’, for instance, not only features what sounds like a toy dog barking, it also switches seamlessly from hard-edged electro to aquatic ’70s funk – all bongos and clavinets – then back again. ‘Call Me’ is a brief phone-sampling slow jam in the spirit of The World’s Famous Supreme Team or Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s ‘Telephone and Rubber Band’; ‘Lass Den Vogel Frei!’ a nutty funk cut-up with cartoon animal noises. Elsewhere, ‘123’ juxtaposes three very different sections to surreal effect – an instructional tape about the three parts of the track, a twisted update of Miami Electro with hints of dubstep, and a slow, dark, unquantized coda. If that’s unexpected, even more so is the fine Captain Beefheart homage, ‘Peeved’.
Yet for me, the album’s finest moments occur when Siriusmo takes his penchant for the quirky and applies it to vocal-led tracks within a more standard dancefloor template. Not that this means some kind of new spin on deep house. Rather, ‘Bad Idea’ mixes Wu-Tang martial artistry with grime intensity, then throws in a killer dubstep bassline to ensure the dancefloor’s going to go off. ‘Einmal in Der Woche Schreien’ (“scream once a week”) starts off like an outtake from OMD’s musique concrete experiment, Dazzle Ships, before melding Rah Band-disco-meets-Autotune frippery with deep acid bass joy. ‘Feed my Meatmachine’ repeats its silly title in a plethora of different ways, raising a smile each time, while ‘Goldene Kugel’ (“golden orb”) manages to be curiously affecting and anthemic without ever straying into the cliched territory of the “dancefloor anthem”.
Mosaik is that rare thing: a playful delight for the club that bears up to repeated plays at home. Siriusly worth its wait.
Justin Toland
