“Squares Will Fall” began in 2012 as an electronic composition lasting exactly 30 minutes, which continued to evolve, eventually forming the foundation for an improvisation by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Jan St. Werner during Mouse on Mars’s Dimensional People sessions at Vernon’s Wisconsin studio.
In 2021, “Squares Will Fall” took the form of a multidirectional loudspeaker choreography for the The 6th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art curated by Çağla Ilk, Adnan Yıldız and Assaf Kimmel in Yekaterinburg, Russia 02.10.2021—05.12.2021 with three layers of the composition suspended from the ceiling and continuously repositioned by performers. The resulting work offered each listener a constantly shifting perspective. In 2026, Werner completed the piece and created its first stereo mix with Andi Toma, his Mouse on Mars partner, who contributed bass elements during the final sessions. Bringing together more than a decade of transformations, the stereo version preserves the work’s open, cut-up character while translating its spatial and performative origins into a focused listening experience.
Elsewhere on the album, “Swamp Brains” is a purely generative composition built through granular synthesis, unfolding as a constantly shifting sonic organism. Guided by actor Roseanne Rubio’s narration of a fictional neuroscientific experiment involving alien life forms that identify as brains, the piece moves between science fiction, cognitive speculation, and computer-generated sound.
Album closer “Flötotto” is derived from a live session led by Jan St. Werner at National Sawdust in New York, featuring Ben Lanz (The National, Beirut), John Colpitts (aka Kid Millions), clarinetists Christa Van Alstine and Rane Moore, and Sufjan Stevens. Through extensive editing and digital transformation, Werner reshaped the performance into an exuberant collage where improvisation, composition, acoustic instrumentation, and electronic processing become one fluid musical language.
Taken together as an album, the songs are a joyous musical adventure. Understanding the complexity of the songs’ origins is not required; as with all that he does, Werner’s love of music and collaboration shines through in this inventive and boundless listen.
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