Spatial, No Problem.

The Jamaican prankster-shaman’s last séance. To hear Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma of Mouse on Mars describe it, the three-day session for Spatial, No Problem.—the dub prankster-shaman Lee Perry’s last project before his death in 2021—was typically atypical. There was a lot of chanting, a lot of wandering around, suitcases full of knickknacks and pages full of cryptic phrases, fish soup, papaya and laughter. Perry reportedly didn’t want it to be a reggae album, and it isn’t. Instead, it’s basically the kind of misfit electropop party hodgepodge Mouse on Mars have been refining since the late ’90s, with Perry unspooling his chatty stream of consciousness on top, channelling Neu-style motorik (“Rockcurry”), Ethio-jazz (“Spatialee”) and macabre New Orleans brass-band music (“State of Emergency”). There’s no centre here, no song, but moods? Loose, funny, endless.