“Ah!” from Oval’s new album, “O”, released September 7th 2010.

Amberley Productions: Directed by Darko Dragicevic, Produced by Austin Stack

Choreography - Walter Bickmann
Lead Dancer - Isabelle Rune

Director of Photography - Sebastien Gonon
Editor - Austin Stack

Set Design - Naoko Tanaka
Costume - Olga Zmiejko, Ann Delic

Assistant Producer - Nana Asase

Oval - Oh (Thrill Jockey, 2010) Oh is the latest release from Oval, a project founded by Markus Popp, Sebastian Oschatz, and Frank Metzger in 1991. Markus has sustained Oval as a solo project since 1995 and this is his first release since 2001. This new EP is a concise and crystalline configuration of micro-tracks, a tangle of erudite complexity that deserves careful unraveling through attentive listening.Oval are already in the history books as the creators of ‘glitch’, that musical exploration of the fallibility inherent in the core of our digital lives. The early works stemmed from a use of “prepared CD’s”, the surface of the medium violated with markers and gashes, physically changing the surface of the disc to inject failure into the mix. Before Oh is judged against Popp’s early work and the genre he helped shape, it is worth remembering that Oval’s investigation and aestheticisation of musical failure was never something entirely new. As Kim Cascone has noted; what is new is that ideas now travel at the speed of light and can spawn entire musical genres in a relatively short period of time. The Oval project was a fulcrum around which many musical trends successfully consolidated to become a genre. What sustained Ovals appeal was that they produced an array of distinct, erudite and engaging works that held interest independent of genre. Oh continues this genealogy; it is in itself singular and captivating.Here we find the percussive hitting of strings nestled among fuzzy ambiance, a drum kit that hints at jazz, sounding stretched and realigned. The sounds of guitars turned inside-out. Regular refrains of the main themes fleetingly surface, stitching the work into a stylistically unified composition; yet consistency arises more from the use of sound quality itself rather than from any salient characteristics of the compositional language. Many have commented on the lack of a ‘glitch’ aesthetic to this work, marking a distinct rupture with the historic Oval project. Despite new ‘live’ and ‘instrumental’ aspects, similarities can be found in the twitchy rhythms, the abrupt spiking frequencies, the soft crackles and distortions, the fiercely intricate yet surprisingly soothing nature of it all.What this release illustrates, like the rest of the Oval project is a fascination with process. The entire recording is drawn from a very narrow palette of sounds and from this limited world Popp crafts an intricate array of variations, an insular array of worlds that hold much in common yet are so far apart. Like a revisit to the classical model of the theme and variations, the basic material remains the same as we are guided through a plethora of distinct and minute evocations. Here many a contemporary producer and composer can learn a lesson about the value of limitations; like a musical application of Occam’s razor - entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity. Popp touches on a fundamental problem of the digital age; how to navigate through the surfeit of information, the forest of detail, and somehow wed the complexity of over-saturation with the consistency of style(welcoming Fíacha O’ Dúbhda to the Tumblr side!)

Oval - Oh (Thrill Jockey, 2010)

Oh is the latest release from Oval, a project founded by Markus Popp, Sebastian Oschatz, and Frank Metzger in 1991. Markus has sustained Oval as a solo project since 1995 and this is his first release since 2001. This new EP is a concise and crystalline configuration of micro-tracks, a tangle of erudite complexity that deserves careful unraveling through attentive listening.

Oval are already in the history books as the creators of ‘glitch’, that musical exploration of the fallibility inherent in the core of our digital lives. The early works stemmed from a use of “prepared CD’s”, the surface of the medium violated with markers and gashes, physically changing the surface of the disc to inject failure into the mix. Before Oh is judged against Popp’s early work and the genre he helped shape, it is worth remembering that Oval’s investigation and aestheticisation of musical failure was never something entirely new. As Kim Cascone has noted; what is new is that ideas now travel at the speed of light and can spawn entire musical genres in a relatively short period of time. The Oval project was a fulcrum around which many musical trends successfully consolidated to become a genre. What sustained Ovals appeal was that they produced an array of distinct, erudite and engaging works that held interest independent of genre. Oh continues this genealogy; it is in itself singular and captivating.

Here we find the percussive hitting of strings nestled among fuzzy ambiance, a drum kit that hints at jazz, sounding stretched and realigned. The sounds of guitars turned inside-out. Regular refrains of the main themes fleetingly surface, stitching the work into a stylistically unified composition; yet consistency arises more from the use of sound quality itself rather than from any salient characteristics of the compositional language. Many have commented on the lack of a ‘glitch’ aesthetic to this work, marking a distinct rupture with the historic Oval project. Despite new ‘live’ and ‘instrumental’ aspects, similarities can be found in the twitchy rhythms, the abrupt spiking frequencies, the soft crackles and distortions, the fiercely intricate yet surprisingly soothing nature of it all.

What this release illustrates, like the rest of the Oval project is a fascination with process. The entire recording is drawn from a very narrow palette of sounds and from this limited world Popp crafts an intricate array of variations, an insular array of worlds that hold much in common yet are so far apart. Like a revisit to the classical model of the theme and variations, the basic material remains the same as we are guided through a plethora of distinct and minute evocations. Here many a contemporary producer and composer can learn a lesson about the value of limitations; like a musical application of Occam’s razor - entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity. Popp touches on a fundamental problem of the digital age; how to navigate through the surfeit of information, the forest of detail, and somehow wed the complexity of over-saturation with the consistency of style

(welcoming Fíacha O’ Dúbhda to the Tumblr side!)