His fame was based as being drummer on the first two Swans albums Filth and Cop. I first heard of Swans in a grouping of listening of bands like Einsturzende Neubaten and Test Dept, but by the 90s, they maintained a kind of cult following that kept them just bubbling under the mainstream (and even more bizarrely, the band seems to have a cult of younger listeners who are discovering them via sites like Reddit and RYM).
Mosimann next showed up as producer to Matt Johnson’s The The. He co produced some of my favorite music by them - Infected and Mind Bomb.
He popped up as a producer in a few interesting places- the debut album of The Hair And Skin Trading Company, Celtic Frosts “Vanity/Nemesis”, a couple of That Petrol Emotion albums and the Young Gods’ most successful records.
This run for him some high profile gigs- Faith No More’s Album of the Year for one. He was the producer for Skinny Puppy’s The Process, but dropped by the band in favor of Martin Atkins (who was in turn dropped for Dave Ogilvie).
Similarly, he was the first producer for Marilyn Manson, but by the time the album Portrait of an American Family came out, he had been replaced (and much of the album re-recorded) by Trent Reznor.
In retrospect, it’s a solid body of work. Mosimann was also the other member of JG Thirlwell’s duo Wiseblood
The short lived band (1986 album and a 1991 EP that was later appended) is like many of Thirlwell’s “Foetus” projects but I find it at once both more accessible and more hard hitting. Mosimann playing the instruments (with some help from the likes of Robert Quine and Hahn Rowe) and writing the music for the project.
I went on a binge of buying up those Foetus discs when Thirsty Ear reissued the albums in the Nineties. Thirlwell has some great albums and if Dirtdish is not in the upper echelon of his work, then surely it has some essential songs. With Mosimann on Percussion, it seems to anticipate the idea of Nine Inch Nails and latter Ministry.
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