Momus (musician)
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Momus(musician).jpg
—Momus' self-description from his LiveJournal
Nick Currie (born February 11,1960 in Paisley, Scotland), more popularly known by the pseudonym Momus (after a Greek god), is a songwriter and blogger. Most of his songs are self-referential and/or postmodern. For more than twenty years he has been releasing playful and transgressive albums on labels in Britain, America, and Japan, building up a personal world dominated by values like diversity, orientalism, and a respect for otherness. He is also well known outside the U.S. as a producer. He is fascinated by identity, Japan, the avant-garde, time travel, and sex. He also wears a patch on his right eye because he suffers from contracting amoebic keratitis.
He has been sued by Michelin U.K., for the song "Michelin Man", which compared the mascot to a blow-up doll, on Hippopotamomus (1991); and by Wendy Carlos for the song "Walter Carlos", which postulated that the post-sexual reassignment surgery Wendy could travel back in time to marry her pre-surgery self, Walter, on Little Red Songbook (1998). In response to the debt incurred from Carlos' lawsuit, which was dismissed, Momus wrote thirty songs about every person or group who commissioned a song at the price of $1,000, compiling Stars Forever (1999). Patrons include artist Jeff Koons and three-year-old animator/superhero Noah Brill. It should be noted that Momus intended "Walter Carlos" as a tribute to the creator of Switched On Bach; he was, in fact, at the peak of his self-described "analogue baroque" period. Stars Forever also features the winners of a karaoke contest started on The Little Red Songbook (1998).
Other Momus activities include writing for Vice Magazine [1] (http://www.viceland.com/), Index Magazine [2] (http://www.indexmagazine.com/), AIGA Voice [3] (http://journal.aiga.org/), and Design Observer [4] (http://www.designobserver.com/), as well as being a kind of guest instructor working on a special sound-art project with students of Future University [5] (http://www.fun.ac.jp/en/) in Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan during the early months of 2005. A book by Momus on photoblogging is forthcoming (March 2005) from British publishers Thames & Hudson [6] (http://www.thamesandhudson.com/).
Albums
- Circus Maximus (1986)
- The Poison Boyfriend (1987)
- Tender Pervert (1988)
- Don’t Stop The Night (1989)
- Monsters Of Love (1990)
- Hippopotamomus (1991)
- The Ultraconformist (Live Whilst Out Of Fashion) (1992)
- Voyager (1992)
- Timelord (1993)
- Slender Sherbert (1995)
- The Philosophy of Momus (1995)
- Twenty Vodka Jellies (1996)
- Ping Pong (1997)
- The Little Red Songbook (1998)
- Stars Forever (1999)
- Folktronic (2001)
- Oskar Tennis Champion (2003)
- Summerisle, a collaboration with Anne Laplantine (2004)
- Otto Spooky (2005)
External link
- Momus's Official Site (http://www.imomus.com/)
- Click Opera (http://livejournal.com/~imomus/) (Momus's LiveJournal blog)
- Momus UK Discography (http://home.tiscali.se/musicworld/momus.html)
Listening
- UbuWeb: Momus and Anne Laplantine (http://www.ubu.com/sound/momus.html) featuring the song Summerisle Horspiel