Having worked with everyone from Ziggy Marley and Randy Crawford to Jacko over the last few years, it can justly be said that German producer Mousse T knows his way around a pop tune. He is best known these days not for the mediocre four-to-the-floor bumps of yesteryear, but for cringeworthy club-camp hits like "Horny" and "Sex Bomb", the latter featuring Welsh fanny-magnet Tom Jones.
His latest album, "Right About Now", seals his slow evolution from beatmaker to cheesemeister with a collection of tunes aimed more at housewives than househeads. Things start out convincingly enough as Herr Mousse teams up with ex-Strangler Hugh Cornwell on "Underground", a natty confection that conjures up some ersatz psychedelia and suggests that this might be an interesting project.
Unfortunately, it’s by far the album’s highlight.
Among the many turn-offs that follow is the decidedly un-cool "Is It Cos I'm Cool?" (featuring Emma Lanford), the embarrassingly tepid "Music Makes Me Fly" (whose chorus is reminiscent of "Hi-Ho Silver Lining") and the anti-aphrodisiac "Sex Has Gone", which features "Cuddly Toy" crooner Roachford.
With "Turn Me On" and "Bounce", Mousse offers attempts at a more visceral, guitar-driven sound: the results are absolutely ineffectual. The title track blatantly rips of En Vogue and "Wow" is the kind of pro-cannabis song Banararama might put their name to.
To give some credit, Mr T eschews his usual penchant for house frameworks and grapples instead with a number of different genres. The problem is that he combines all of these diverse elements into unforgivably homogenous fodder. The blurb tells us that "Right Here Now" shows 'a different side to Mousse - a side of experimentation, variation and exploration, but with his feet still placed firmly in 'the song'.
For that read “Cheese - albeit in the finest European tradition.”
