Oval
Systemisch

Listening to this work by Oval, a German trio led by Markus Popp and associated with the experimental scene that enlivened electronic music in the mid-'90s, is a singular tour de force. "Systemisch," their second album, was released in 1994 and sounds like a claustrophobic collection of tracks (eleven, totaling an hour in length) that are monochrome and deconstructed, lacking development and built around the same recurring idea: a sound background, often looped, plus percussive impulses derived from impure sounds, which almost always turn into a sort of crackling or ticking more than a true percussive beat. Oval are among the pioneers of glitch, the stylistic trend born as a reaction to the overly clean and crystalline sounds of electronics: hence the gesture of dirtying those sounds, scratching their clear surface with a noisy speck.

The music of "Systemisch" was born within a well-structured "system," one dominated by digital equipment, by software and hardware, by the world of media and information: it offers a critical reading and a caustic commentary on that system. Titles like "The Politics Of Digital Audio," "Mediaton," "Tonregie," as well as the ironic "Oval Office" or the tautological "Compact Disc" speak for themselves. This system (of power, and the means and supports through which it is manifested) is put on trial by Oval with their muffled and barely recognizable melodies, with fragmented loops, often interrupted and then resumed, with the anxiety-inducing hopscotch of off-kilter percussion. Synthesizers are used sparingly; instead, they prefer to ruin CDs by writing on them with markers or damage their digital equipment to use the fragmentary sound that results.

The result is a challenging music, leaning towards experimentation and certainly not entertainment. Interesting music (even noticed by Björk, who samples a fragment of "Aero Deck," the second track, for her album "Vespertine") but demanding. As mentioned earlier, it is a musical commentary on themes and issues (often) beyond music.