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Sep 24, 2010 Oval By Hays Davis

The music of Oval seems constructed to be wildly polarizing to its listeners. Fans will likely consider Oval’s new two-disc O to be their magnum opus, while others might label a full run-through to be a maddening endurance test.

Markus Popp has been cultivating Oval’s electronic “glitch” sounds for nearly 20 years (and 15 years since two prior members departed). Working with mutilated CDs, Popp alters tracks using pen markings over instrumental passages that end up interrupted, reworked, and rethought through incursions of pops and clicks. Popp stretches out over the course of these two discs to offer the full range of possibilities within his métier, and the result is a fractured-audio buffet.

Disc Two carries 50 of O’s 70 total tracks, offering shorter presentations of these aural fractals. This can be the preferable means of listening to Oval: keeping the kaleidoscope rotating regularly. Popp obviously has his methods down to a science, guiding the music and pops on such tracks as “Kukicha” to flow like the doctored source is inhaling and exhaling. “Bergen Beast” and “Co-Echo” are examples of the odd beauty Popp sometimes sculpts, where manipulated acoustic strings drive along a tightly coiled version of melody. For any piece that’s even faintly accessible, however, there’s a thorny, cracked creation such as “Java” that rounds out the Oval experience.

With the pops and jolting shifts contained in each piece, O plays like aural equivalent of looking through a broken mirror, though one where Popp manages to artfully jumble the reflection. Left alone, these pieces would be pleasant trifles; with Oval, their careful defilement becomes their new personality. (www.myspace.com/markuspopp)

Author rating: 5/10