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Everyone has a song that, when heard, will whip them up and away to a moment in their past. Mine is the title track of Spiritualized‘s Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, and only the opening space-shuttle bleeps are needed for an involuntarily reliving of heady art college days – the tacky plastic smell of cheap acrylic paint, the groping of strange art concepts and stranger art students.

Now Ladies And Gentlemen… has just been re-released, with the obligatory extra discs of new material, in an exciting black variation of the original’s pill-popping packaging. For once, the extra odds and ends aren’t superfluous, but, through long blasts of a capella gospel choirs and ambient guitar wobbles, fully explain the creative journey of the album.

Similar explanatory evidence might de-tangle the tortured complications of Mike Yes Yes Ersing‘s work. Whether the songs would dreamily evoke days gone by, or simply leave a ribbon of burnt-out synapses is another matter. For Mike Yes Yes Ersing has created a body of work that is nuanced as it is crazed, as utterly creative as it is head-spinning.

His songs are short, razor-sharp and playful in the way that a toddler who’s just found a nailgun is. Some songs, like A Priori Insistence Teething are dreamy, beautiful and ethereal – as angelic as anything you’ll hear all year. Others, like Mood Dependant Retrieval, are close to having been plugged straight into the mind of a schizophrenic.

Mike Yes Yes Ersing – A Priori Insistence Teething

Mike Yes Yes Ersing‘s songs scream to be heard. Menace, lunacy, happiness, desire – it’s all in his waif-like song-slivers. Each delivers a surprise, varying manically from the last. A true, thrilling original.