94diskont. - Oval (1996)

Oval was a trio of electronic composers at this point. Afterwards, leader Markus Popp would make Oval his own signature alias.

There’s a lot of busy concept work going on in the background. The glitchy sounding punctuation in the background came from playing CDs that had been physically damaged on purpose. Not everyone knows the frustration of a flaw on your CD causing it to click and skip and drop frames. Popp did this on purpose, sampled it, and worked it into his compositions. I don’t know if that’s brilliant but it’s definitely interesting.

The result isn’t really all that glitchy, though. Despite the chaotic method, you get mostly smooth, slowly growing ambient pieces.

The main one is the first track. At 24 minutes, Do While was built as a sound installation piece that toured Europe.

It’s extremely cold in my basement here this morning, and this chilly music isn’t helping much. But it is a bit hypnotic and calming to have on.