Are You Not Devo? You Are Mutato

How Mark Mothersbaugh, an Agent of De-Evolution, wormed his way into America’s subconscious By RANDALL ROBERTS

The Mutato Muzika building in West Hollywood is painted Day-Glo green and looks like a tipped-over hamster wheel, with mirrored windows as rungs that make the building seem like it’s constantly spinning. Beneath the main-floor recording studio is a big, cluttered circular room. To enter you pass a threshold guarded by a Speed Racer rug, and beyond this threshold is a sight that would give the Klaxons or Datarock a conniption: Korgs and Rolands are scattered on the floor. An Optigon, a rare 1970s-era console organ that uses flimsy discs to play odd, ghostly sounds, sits in a corner. Shelves hold computer monitors, cassette decks and DAT machines; tubular bells are ready to be struck; an EMS polysynthesizer and an electrocomp synthesizer await electricity. An Ondioline keyboard that once belonged to Pink Floyd. Boxes are strewn throughout, but look closer and they’re filled with more memorabilia: a hand-written score for the film Drop Dead Gorgeous; busts of Chairman Mao and JFK.

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