Tag Archives: Jan St. Werner

Jan St. Werner previews upcoming new album, Squares Will Fall, with excerpt of title track ft. Justin Vernon

18 September 2026

Jan St. Werner, one half of German avant-garde electronic duo Mouse on Mars and an endlessly inventive artist, has announced a new solo album called Squares Will Fall. More than a decade in the making, the album brings together Werner’s love of experimentation, inventive sound design and collaboration, with contributions from Justin Vernon, Sufjan Stevens, Ben Lanz and John Colpitts, among others. Squares Will Fall originally began in 2012 as a 30-minute electronic composition, created for a friend’s 30th birthday, before continuing to change over the years. The piece later became the foundation for an improvisation between Werner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon during the sessions for Mouse on Mars’ Dimensional People at Vernon’s studio in Wisconsin. In 2021, Werner reworked the composition into a spatial installation for the Ural Industrial Biennial, where three separate layers of the piece were played through loudspeakers suspended from the ceiling that were continually moved around the space by performers, creating a different listening experience depending on where the audience was.

Werner completed the piece this year, creating its first stereo mix at Mouse on Mars’ Paraverse Studios with his Mouse on Mars partner Andi Toma, who also contributed bass to the final version. After more than a decade of transformations, Squares Will Fall is now being released as record “preserving the piece’s open, cut-up character while translating its spatial and performative origins into a form suitable for focused listening”, as the press release describes. It will see the light of day on November 13th through Thrill Jockey and coinciding with the album announcement, Werner has let loose an excerpt of the sublime and beguiling title track. Describing it, Werner says:

“A computer music free jazz rhapsody jumbled in a space capsule with Justin not really understanding how he got on board. Justin asks the computer. The computer replies with a drum solo.”

‘Squares Will Fall’ comes accompanied by a video made by Galina Nemtseva / Icon Film.

Kid Millions and Jan St. Werner share new single from upcoming album Imperium Droop

29 May 2021

Two of our favourite trailblazing artists, drummer extraordinaire and multi-instrumentalist and composer John Colpitts aka Kid Millions and electronic veteran musician and producer Jan St. Werner, are releasing Imperium Droop, their first album as a duo, next month. As we had previously mentioned, Imperium Droop picks up from where Millions and Werner had left off in 2016 when Werner invited Millions to perform an interpretation of his Felder album in a series of curated live dates. The pair played a unique concert at Oneida’s practice space and planned to follow it with an ongoing series of recorded collaborations, which saw them build an archive of recorded material that led to Imperium Droop.

Following the first exhilarating taste, ‘Sorrows and Compensations’, Werner and Millions have shared a new cut from the upcoming album called ‘Dark Tetrad’. Take a listen below and grab the album when it’s out on June 25th through Thrill Jockey.

Kid Millions and Jan St. Werner announce debut collaborative album Imperium Droop

19 March 2021

We love drummer extraordinaire and all-round genius multi-instrumentalist and composer John Colpitts aka Kid Millions (Man Forever, Oneida) and we love electronic veteran musician and producer Jan St. Werner, a sound innovator known for a plethora of solo compositions and collaborative projects and as one half of German avant-garde electronic duo Mouse On Mars. So we couldn’t be more excited to learn of a collaboration between Kid Millions and Jan St. Werner, who have just announced Imperium Droop, their debut album as a duo. Described as “continuation of an ongoing musical dialogue between the two musicians”, the album picks up from where Millions and Werner left off in 2016 when Werner invited Millions to perform an interpretation of his Felder album in a series of curated live dates. A unique concert took place at Oneida’s practice space with just one person in the audience – songwriter Helado Negro. Millions and Werner planned to follow that concert with an ongoing series of recorded collaborations between them and ended up building an archive of recorded material that led to Imperium Droop.

Featuring guests contributions from Mats Gustafsson, Andrew Barker, and Richard Hoffman, the album is also described as “an incomparable work of gripping and intrepid sonic fluctuations”.

We’ll have to wait until June 25th for Imperium Droop to be out through Thrill Jockey but we can already get an exhilarating first taste from it with closing track ‘Sorrows and Compensations’. Here it is.

Jan St. Werner performs his new Miscontinuum Album in London this weekend

05 February 2015

Jan St. Werner - Miscontinuum Album

Jan St. Werner, one half of German avant-garde electronic duo Mouse On Mars, released a new album, Miscontinuum Album, last week. The effort is the third instalment off his Fiepblatter Catalogue Series, and saw St. Werner recruit contributors Dylan Carlson (Earth), Markus Popp (Oval), Kathy Alberici, and Taigen Kawabe (Bo Ningen).
As the press release explains, Miscontinuum is the fruit of an electronic opera, having also been developed and performed as a radio play, over the period of four years. “The central concept of Miscontinuum explores misconceptions of time and memory, inspired by unique acoustic phenomena derived digital phasing and musical time stretching techniques”.
St. Werner’s first performed Miscontinuum as a part of his Asymmetric Studio series in Munich in June 2013. Lucky Londoners are getting the chance to see a revised version of Miscontinuum this weekend, with performances taking place this Saturday at Cafe Oto and the following day at St Luke’s Church.
Here’s an album medley to whet your appetite.

Miscontinuum Album is out now via Thrill Jockey.