'This Must Stop!' is not shovelware, old content shoe-horned into a sexy new medium. No record label or multimedia conglomerate has designed this title by committee. The first Momus CD-ROM marks a particular moment in the industry: the emergence of the independent 'auteurist' CD-ROM.

This is a disk 'by Momus', which means that, unlike Laurie Anderson's 'Puppet Motel' or David Bowie's 'Jump' (put together and possibly diluted by teams of professional multimedia designers) this is 100% the vision of the artist. What you lose on the swings of slickness you more than gain on the roundabouts of originality. (Imagine Laurie Anderson making a CD-ROM the same way she made 'O Superman', alone at home, hands-on with the building blocks of her medium, her mistakes and her originality almost indistinguishable).

Just as every Momus record is entirely written, recorded, engineered, sung and played by Momus, so every frame on the ROM has been designed and conceived by Momus, one of a growing tribe of Mac-literate digital renaissance men.

'This Must Stop!' is not only the first in a series of ROMs which Momus will be authoring and making available alongside his music albums, it is also perhaps the beginning of a new anarchistic trend in authoring, publishing and distribution: indie or 'samizdat' CD-ROMs composed and manufactured relatively cheaply by an artist at home, cut on a domestic CD-R drive, publicised worldwide over the web, marketed and distributed direct to the audience. Cutting out the middlemen of the record, multimedia and retail industries altogether, it's a hi-tech 'authorised bootleg' and a completely unique insight into the culture and imagination of Momus.

In over 500 MB of information, the ROM includes not only 'This Must Stop!' but also the entire websites of Momus and Shazna. Browse at your leisure through the complete lyrics, voluminous press file, sleeve shots of every Momus album, writings and more.

'This Must Stop!' resembles a children's game or weird Czech cartoon. First you select a character who interests you on the Pager. Then you find yourself in a bizarre and atmospheric house peopled with Shakespearean monsters who shout at you, quarrel or ask each other for drugs. Click the door in each of their rooms and visit the interactive exhibits beyond: short films, interactive text mazes, lectures, slideshows and tours of the worlds of artists Momus admires (Franz Kafka, Paul Klee). The ROM also includes demos of ten unreleased songs. When you get bored just listening you can play along on a fully operational interactive Casio keyboard.


The twenty US dollars price includes postage to any location in the world.

At the moment 'This Must Stop!' is available for Macintosh computers only.

Made with Macromedia Director. Drawings by Florence Manlik, Voices by Nicholas Mead and Jennifer Dick.

The ROM is available by E mail reservation only. When you send the reservation you will be given further details. Please state your Mac's RAM capacity and whether it has 8 bit or 16 bit sound (if you're not sure, look in the Sound Out section of your Sound control panel. Does it let you switch to 16 bit sound?). ROMs will be delivered within ten days of receipt of payment.

If your copy of 'This Must Stop!' is technically deficient in any way it will be replaced free of charge.

These screenshots are from beta versions of 'This Must Stop!'.
They may not correspond exactly to the finished version of the ROM.
To see interactive excerpts from the ROM (only if you have the
Shockwave plug-in) click here.

You load the ROM and choose to enter one of 25 rooms
inhabited by one or several of the following characters:
Mr Goat-Hare, a spirit guide
Ryunsuke Carlos Stevens Infanta, an author
Beatrice, a beatnik, the 'Unknown Girl'
Balbus, homunculus, a Lustful Moron
Belvedere Putsch, a would-be dictator

'Of Cruelty And The Inability To Love'. A short film
with voice over by Momus. Resembles some of Derek
Jarman's super 8 pieces. Based on a loop from the
'Hairstyle of the Devil' video.

A fragmented image of the face of Franz Kafka greets
you. The pieces ripple, gather together then separate again.
You can click on each one to hear an excerpt from one of
Kafka's letters or diary entries.

A slideshow about Edinburgh, Momus's town of origin.
Beside the images, taken from a book of Chinese paintings
of gloomy Edinburgh streets, are cassettes containing some
of Momus's earliest songs, composed in 'Auld Reekie'.

The Paul Klee answering machine. Push the play button to
hear 'messages' containing dramatised portraits of the Swiss
painter, master of the miniaturised improvisation.

Next in the series of heroes is a piece dedicated to
Leonard Cohen. Momus improvises around a single
photograph of Cohen and his Norwegian lover Mariane
in a restuarant on the island of Hydra sometime in the 1960s.

The Talking Casio. Click its keys to hear several octaves
of notes from the notebooks of Momus: abortive song
titles, maxims and observations. Treated voices and a
big breakbeat.

An unreleased Momus demo called 'A Card From Islington'.
This time the Casio has notes under its keys, allowing
you to play along with the song. In fact you can also
sing its simple melody karaoke style, since the lyrics
are flicking by in synch too.

A narrative maze made entirely of text. Try to get out of
the forest without dying on a dissecting table or perishing
of sheer embarrassment at being caught having sex with elves.
If you have the Shockwave plug-in you can play this game
right now by clicking here.

Momus's appearance on cult Japanese kids' show
Ugo Ugo. Momus speaks in Japanese, demonstrating
how to turn sound samples made at Tokyo's Shibuya Station
into sound effects for a song.

Songs featured on the ROM:

Smart Drugs
Things You Never Did
Broken To Joking
My Double
A Card From Islington
I'm Still Trying
Millipedes
Confectioner
The Kitten's Telephone
Young People Today
David Hamilton
Organon
The Pink Song
Trashy Like TV
Japanese Especially
Trance Cocktail Airlines
Index