O

アルバムレビュー

From his music alone, Oval's Markus Popp always seemed the most professorial of the experimental techno crowd in the '90s, but he left the academy, so to speak, with barely a backward glance, early in the 2000s. In that light, his return in 2010 with an EP (Oh) and the LP O are most welcome. His methods have changed remarkably, although the results haven't. Where he used custom gear in the past, he's traded it in for off-the-shelf processing software. Technology must have caught up with him, though, since he's easily able to conjure the sound of Oval — warm drones and string plucks that are sliced and diced with the cold rigor that Buñuel and Dalí applied to an Andalusian eyeball. The big difference on this two-disc set, however, is the occasional, recognizable drum pattern, mostly snare strikes or cymbal crashes, that give the rest of the music a wider dynamic range. The first disc is a 20-track monolith of bucolic digitalia, much like Popp's earlier landmarks 94Diskont and Systemische. The second disc, however, includes 50 tracks of what Popp refers to as ringtones — "concise, highly detailed pieces that are a conscious nod to the culture of instant gratification."