jan st werner: miscontinuum album (fiepblatter catalogue #3)

Miscontinuum Album documents an impressive new work by seminal electronic musician Jan St. Werner, whose innovations with Mouse on Mars and Microstoria are well documented. Over a period of approximately four years Miscontinuum has been developed and refined as an operatic live performance in Munich, as well as a radio play. This recorded incarnation of the work is the third entry in Werner’s lauded Fiepblatter series, and features contributions by Dylan Carlson (Earth), Markus Popp (Oval), Kathy Alberici, and Taigen Kawabe (Bo Ningen). It is a challenging listen not compromised for casual music consumption habits, but with time and close listening it yields vast rewards. Miscontinuum Album is a radical convergence of sound exploration and storytelling that has few precedents. The central concept of Miscontinuum explores misconceptions of time and memory, inspired by unique acoustic phenomena derived digital phasing and musical time stretching techniques. There is an aura of doom that pervades the work. Much of the album’s evocative nature comes from the interplay of Werner’s electronics with Alberici and Kawabe’s voices and the contrast between those organic and inorganic elements. Popp, a longtime collaborator with Werner in Microstoria, wrote the libretti, which is presented in five distinct scenes and recited redolently by Carlson. The surreal plot involves a progressive distinction of time as a force rather than a structuring system, and an individual who can shift consciously between states within that force. The high concepts and unusual creative partners combine for an album that is uncommonly emotionally resonant.