Jan St. Werner: “Feed Opener” (Blaze Colour Burn, Thrill Jockey 2013)

While St. Werner has a new album out this year (Miscontinuum Album, also on Thrill Jockey), I’m still partial to the purely instrumental tracks on its predecessor, channeling all of the delightfully weird sound design that’s characterized the majority of his career since early Mouse on Mars records. Whereas his alias Lithops always seemed torn between two worlds, one being the more rhythmic and accessible tracks and songs of MoM and the other being the more esoteric process-based experiments of Microstoria (with Markus Popp/Oval), under his own name, St. Werner’s curiosity seems unfettered and liberated. Curiously, though, he seems as though he prefers collaboration, as both of his two “solo” albums under his proper name factor in numerous musicians, vocalists, and extras, though the result is something more like a Schwitters Dada performance than a jam band.