Jan St. Werner

Best known as one half of the innovative German electronic duo Mouse on Mars, Jan St. Werner also pursued a solo career as Lithops and under his own name. He began releasing music as Lithops in the mid-'90s (around the time of his collaboration with Markus Popp, Microstoria), issuing several singles and two full-lengths, Umi Unit and Didot, by the end of the decade. Despite St. Werner's work with Mouse on Mars and the duo's spinoff project with the Fall's Mark E. Smith, Von Südenfed, Lithops' output continued at a steady pace in the 2000s, including albums like Scrypt and the two-part release Mound Magnet as well as compilations such as Queries and Ye Viols! During the 2000s, St. Werner also acted as the artistic director for Amsterdam's Institute for Electronic Music. In 2013, St. Werner released Blaze Colour Burn, the first of a series of experimental releases called Fiepblatter, on Thrill Jockey. The second volume, Transcendental Animal Numbers, which used extreme dynamic and frequency shifts to approximate the random-yet-organic quality of field recordings, appeared in 2014. In 2015, St. Werner collaborated with members of Earth, Oval and Bo Ningen on Miscontinuum Album, which had already been performed as an opera and radio play in the four years prior to its release.