Oval - 94diskont. (1995)

 

Glitch / Ambient

RIYL: Microstoria, Fennesz, Jan Jelinek

★★★½

Oval's Markus Popp is a pioneer of glitch music, one of many sub-genres of computer sounds that emerged in the 1990s. Built around the "aesthetic of failure", glitch music often comprises ambient soundscapes constructed from source material of clicks, scratches, beeps, or other "bad" sounds that we usually associate with technological malfunctions.

94diskont, the group's magnum opus, has since been heralded as one of the defining albums of the genre because it perfectly exemplifies the theory behind it. Many of the artifacts used in the album's construction were reborn from destroyed vinyl LPs, while the overarching looped structures harken back to the patterns produced by skipping record players. Somehow, these auditory scrapes and bruises coalesce into something beautiful as the decaying layers are painstakingly assembled to imbue the music with real human emotion to contrast with their circuitboard exterior.

"Line Extension", the track that magnetized me toward Oval in the first place, is notable for its paradoxical use of jagged mechanical edges to embody fluid motion, and the rest of 94diskont shares that sensibility. The album's centerpiece, however, is undoubtedly the 24-minute, logically-titled "Do While" which slowly explores a simple, repeated theme that is sure to be etched on the inner folds of your gray matter before its runtime is up. Taking hints from minimalist composers such as Steve Reich and Terry Riley, the layered repetition serves as an elongated crescendo that requires every minute of the side-long track to achieve its climax. The same motif is reprised on "Do While ⌘X" to close out 94diskont right where it began, neatly tying up the entire album's experience into one never-ending loop that threatens to spin on and on into eternity, even after us humans are no longer around to hear it.