Ott Tammik | Features Editor
With laptops, synthesizers and video projectors overcrowding the stage, San Francisco’s Maus Haus might at first glance seem more like an engineering lab than a band.
The sextet came together in early 2007 and completed its first album, Lark Marvels, last October. Actually, the group is as much ’60s psychedelia as it is electro-pop, and this without a single guitar.
“Four out of six of us are pretty good guitar players,” said lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Jason Kick. “We all got together, and no one wanted to pick up a guitar. At the same time we had all these keyboards lying around. So we thought, ‘oh, let’s just pick up and play these things.’”
The entourage of oddly named instruments such as the MicroKorgs gives the poppy experimental rock a buzzing robotic coating. In addition to the electronica regalia, however, Maus Haus includes two vocalists, a bass guitar, a jazz-based drummer and a wind instrument player.

“In terms of creating the music, we’re all over the map,” said Kick, who first began actively listening to music when he discovered Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana in middle school. “It’s sort of all unpredictable. We don’t like gimmicks and we don’t like to be defined, but that’s not the point. We’ve all been into different types of electronic, and there are times when we want things to really rock.”
Inspired by white noise, the layered, experimental product includes some Beck-ish atonal grunge, but it is nothing too extreme. The vocals find themselves somewhere between the Doors’ poetic laziness and the light-handed spirit of the Beatles, which one review dubbed as a sort of “politeness.” Maus Haus is refreshing, quirky and catchy.
“We used technology (but technology let us down)” begins with a hypnotic, marching beat akin to Velvet Underground. “The nightmares that woke you up/ Are starting to keep you up/ You think you’d have better luck if you put your machine on the shelf,” sing tProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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vocalists, as a series of video game sounds enter with the chorus. The song’s concept of failing machines was originally inspired by the sight of a shredded piano that had been dropped when vocalist Joseph Genden was walking outside of a bar one day.
The track “Rigid Breakfast,” balances a poppy melody with a twitchy beat and warped, high-pitched bursts. “Cause people here are so lazy/ They stay inside and watch the shows.”
The lyrics often seem to compliment the sounds, and Kick acknowledged an underlying concept about “destroying habits and disrupting an automated existent.” In other words, being spontaneous.
“There is definitely something to be said nowadays about instant access and social networking,” Kick said. “People are sitting at home and are constantly connected, but how connected are they really? You know, to like reality? Sometimes, it can get really lonely even though we have all these options.”
Kick explained that due to the band’s size, they often find themselves working in pairs during the creative process. “There is some streamlining; but it can be anyone’s idea, so there we don’t identify ourselves as singular players. But almost at no time are the six of us together when we are composing. It almost never works, and it turns into total chaos if everyone wants to invent,” said Kick.
Kick is excited about the new developments in the band and potential plans to release a series of EP’s, each with different vibes. “We’ve been doing a lot of new things. It’s difficult to know which direction we’re going in – maybe in all directions.”
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