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Lithops, "Mound Magnet Pt. 2: Elevations Above Sea Level"
Besides this Lithops solo project, Jan St. Werner spends time in Mouse on Mars, Microstoria, and Von Südenfed in addition to few other even more obscure monikers. While the aforementioned projects are "bands," perhaps in an unconventional sense, Lithops is his chance to act completely on his own and while traces of those other projects are evident, this is a wonderfully unmanageable beast all on its own.
While Microstoria and Mouse on Mars stayed closer to "conventional" electronic music, the more recent Von Südenfed project has shown a greater tendency for experimentation, but keeping within a still-danceable framework, even despite Mark E. Smith's trademark vocals on that project. With Lithops, however, St. Warner has gone balls out in experimentation: while he still isn't afraid to build a track around a crunchy electro beat, it is sonically much more all over the place. "Roctrum" and "Concretemess and Absaction" both have a steady recognizable beat behind them, but the other pieces of the tracks are all over the place, like a malfunctioning sampler spitting out its 16 bit death rattles throughout.
St. Warner does make some other bows to conventionality, mostly old school electro in the form of "Noo Non M Oon" and "Bleasure Pastique," the latter meshes the analog beats with subtle melodies and lo-fi Game Boy synth tones in a way that one could probably breakdance to it if they were so inclined (but they'd probably look like an ass doing so). The lo-fi electronic elements come up on the brief, bitcrushed passage of "Every Detail's Matter" and the ancient Atari engine revs of "Baliation" that mix quite well with the violent noise blasts and IDM synth elements.
Perhaps the most interesting are the tracks that come flying completely out of left field in terms of color and tone. The Allophons remix of "Mound Magnet Pt. 1" is stripped down to be 1940s era vocal samples layered with guitar loops that make for a much more controlled and mellow work than most of the preceding tracks. Both of the "Serendippo" tracks (4 and 5) diverge the most, with the former resembling a Middle Eastern melodic structure slapped on top of a waltz rhythm that somehow works, and the latter is a completely different work of disembodied voices swirling from another dimension over digital anvil percussion clanks and found sound collage.
In a genre that has been so heavily mined for experimentation due to the ability to utilize and exploit any and all technological innovations, Lithops’ has created something that, while not groundbreakingly new, takes a new and wildly flailing approach to the genre and style that is all over the map in terms of style and structure, but obviously being directed by the more than able hands of a true artist. Don't expect to dance to it down at the club, but listen intently and be rewarded.
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