The first gig I went to when I moved to London in 1997 was Mouse on Mars (supported by Fridge, iirc). So if, on the way home after this Ether festival performance on the South Bank, I had somehow managed to throw myself off the Hungerford Bridge to drown in the swirling Thames below, the symmetry at least would have amused me.

A couple of weeks ago I received a weird, semi-apologetic email from the South Bank Centre. It ran along the lines of “you know those tickets you booked to see a live soundtrack to Herzog’s Fata Morgana by Mouse on Mars? Well, we’re not going to be playing the film. Never were, really, and though we can see why some could have thought that, it was never our intention, via the vivid description of the film’s contents in the programme, to imply that you were actually going to see any of it. Funny what some people can read into things”. (Apparently, here had been copyright “issues”). I vaguely enquired about a refund, but an overwhelming inertia meant I was to be stuck with them. For once, my own laziness was not to prove to be my undoing – the show was to be a great one.

So they did in fact play a film. For copyright reasons (I don’t think the aforementioned “issues” were ever resolved), I’m not able to say whether in fact it was or was not Werner Herzog’s Fata Morgana as billed. Let’s just say it was typically Herzog in terms of its fascination with different cultures, with outsiders, with nature. Although it may not have actually been the film he described as “”a documentary shot by extraterrestrials from the Andromeda Nebula, and left behind”, of course. You following? Good. The film began with a shot of a plane landing in the desert, to a soundtrack of electronic whine. Tracking shots of dunes followed, with Morricone-esque harmonica wailing and one of the duo (can’t tell which, it was pretty dark up there) standing facing the big screen, gaspering and muttering into a microphone. Amazingly for a band whose recorded output is so dependent on it, it took a good fifteen minutes for any discernible rhythm to emerge – a subtle glitchy pattern which gradually built to a huge echoing pulse, with added guitar working it up to something resembling Can.

In the second part of the film, the natives emerge. Kids squabble. A boy drags his dog through the dunes on a stick. A man sweeps away the rocks outside his cave house. A mad-looking chap brandishes an iguana at the camera. These are some of the most enduring images of the film, with Mouse on Mars creating a worthy soundtrack, akin to 2006’s Varcharz album in its density, yet even more “out”. They successfully blended harsh avant garde squeals with more playful sections which were almost danceable, crisp beats with squelchy shuffles. A French horn player came on to add an additional layer of breathy melody to the finale of this complex and challenging – yet highly listenable – piece. I hope it gets some sort of release soon, with or without the accompanying film. Whatever film that is, of course.

I was far too lazy to hurl myself off the bridge afterwards…