CD-Kritik aus dem Glidemagazine, USA
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Mars Mushrooms
Transparent Eyeball
Kenny Bohlin
Friday, December 02, 2005

Sometimes I think the corporate machine which dictates American musical taste infects all aspects of our collective psyche. Music as marketing is constantly being beamed into our brains. Even Starbucks has a record label. This musi-marketing is a profound groove killer, an entity that respects only anti-music. Visual beauty is more valued than musical ability, highly stylized dance skills more than original, insightful songs. It is effective only because studio tricks can produce something that seems very much like music out of the ether in pretty teenager’s heads.

Those are cynical thoughts of course; real music is an eternal, even deeply spiritual phenomenon. It can be polluted by record companies, diluted by tasteless, narcissistic pop tarts and used in its most debased sense: to sell toothpaste or cars but it cannot be destroyed outright. Repress it in LA and it springs back anew in Austin or Nashville. Sanitize it for your protection at Disney and it busts out of the Bowery in New York. Squeeze it down London and it reforms in Germany. Mars Mushrooms hails from that strange country. You can really find some real beauty out in the pristine wilderness.

This German band defies convention: shunning pop and choosing the complex forms of jam band music. Love it or hate it, this style of music requires hours of dedication and practice, with little payoff but the joy of it. MM is no exception, they effortlessly slide through all sorts of sonic styles and emotional textures. There is depth on this record which cannot be casually denied. Darkness and death are present here as a counterpoint to the boundless musical joy of the jam. Even the title is well developed and thought out. The name Transparent Eyeball is taken from the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing. I see all.”

The songs here are wonderful. The softer songs like “Killer” don’t hit the spot like the hard rocking “Heat,” but that doesn’t make them bad, only less good. There is something fascinating about pretty melodies coupled with dark lyrics. It’s catchy enough to slip into your subconscious, but it’s also deep enough to make you think. Of course the place where Mars Mushrooms really excels is the improvisation in-between the lyrics, where the music stretches out and grooves.

There’s a nice sampler of jamming here, especially on “Mr. Caveman” and “The River.” Mars Mushrooms jamming can be pretty or intense and it can turn on a dime. This is what the ancients called tight. It can leave you guessing and it can leave you floating. It gets better with each listen. It’s good music to put in your walkman to go for a run. There’s energy on this album, even when the music isn’t turned up loud. (This is what the ancients called swing)

This is a reminder that the spirit of music is alive and well somewhere out beyond LA, with its gourmet coffee corporate monolith. Perhaps the greatest music does sell something after all, not coffee or underwear but joy, jubilance and transcendence. The end result is worth more than the price of a CD or a ticket. If money can’t buy happiness, perhaps the currency of joy is music. Using that logic, Transparent Eyeball is a bargain; delivering more core emotion for your buck, and you get to keep the change.