Mouse On Mars – Capturing Lee "Scratch" Perry's Last Session

Lee “Scratch” Perry reshaped how people think about the recording studio. So when I heard that his final official album project came out of a three-day session in Berlin with legendary electronic duo Mouse on Mars, I headed over to Kreuzberg to talk to Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma to find out what happened.

The duo have worked with everyone from Bon Iver to Stereolab to Mark E. Smith, made classic leftfield records like Niun Niggung, Idiology and Dimensional People and have always approached their work with irreverence and invention.

We talk about their decades-long creative partnership, the studios they’ve built and rebuilt, and a philosophy of working that can sometimes mean throwing ideas away rather than trying to force them into shape.

When Perry arrived at the Paraverse studio in 2019, Mouse on Mars had prepared for almost anything. What followed was a constantly moving recording session, with microphones set up across different rooms and musicians ready to follow wherever Perry took things. There was no conventional idea of a song, or much interest in making another reggae record. Parts of the record sound like an alternative reality Can record, where Damo Suzuki has stepped aside to let Perry take the vocal helm.

Jan and Andi were genial hosts during our hour together, and it’s obvious that spending those three days with such a legend at such a point in his life left an impression.

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