Oval >> Meddling machine muzak

Oval - "Shop In Store"

(Thrill Jockey Records, ~1994-96)

I saw, and hated, Oval opening for Tortoise in May of '98.  Since the other dude from the "band" had recently absconded, it was now just a solo project of Markus Popp.  He stood there on the stage while staring dispassionately, and pretty much unblinkingly, at a Mac laptop computer, occasionally clicking it to adjust some algorithm or trigger a sample or what have you.  I exited the Howlin' Wolf shaking my head in disbelief after 4 or 5 songs, then returned about half an hour later to catch Tortoise's triumphant set.

"Shop In Store" is one of two bonus tracks added to the U.S. issue of Oval's influential third album 94Diskont.  For some unknown reason, despite hating Oval live, I bought it on LP in summer '98 from Thrill Jockey mailorder.  This U.S. LP comes with a bonus 12" of remixes by very hip dudes: Jim O'Rourke, Mouse On Mars, Scanner and Christian Vogel.  (To summarize, the German CD came out in 1995 on Mille Plateaux Records, and only has 5 tracks; the U.S. LP+12" came out in 1996 on Thrill Jockey, with a a whopping 11 tracks.)  Few of the tracks on the album have as much vigor as "Shop In Store," with most of them taking on a more aquatic, ambient feel, so you may be disappointed if you go buy the whole album after enjoying "SIS."

This album and Oval's previous one, Systemisch, pretty much invented the whole glitch genre, and "Shop In Store" introduced an undulating rhythmic quality to the genre.  It's a pretty revolutionary track no matter how you slice it.  Read some interesting info on 94Diskont here.  If you hadn't guessed from the music and the name of the genre, Oval made its music by literally flipping over CDs, scratching them up with metal implements, and then playing them and isolating little segments to create longer loops, etc.  At least that's how I've always understood it, though I'm sure I'm omitting some steps.  In any case, this kind of music could be described as both the literal and figurative destruction of music as most people know it.  And I remember reading somewhere back in the day that he actually used mainstream pop n' rock CDs, which makes the end result even cooler.  Alvin Lucier pioneered the concept of making music out of non-music with his piece "I Am Sitting In A Room" decades ago, and others have pushed the envelope further.  Christian Marclay intentionally scratched up vinyl records in the '80s and recorded / looped the skipping and crackling sounds they made upon playback.  Oval found a little niche and exploited it well for a while, but it cannot be denied that they were doing exactly what Marclay did in the '80s, albeit with CDs instead of vinyl.  (One kind of plastic instead of another.)  I think Oval is still around, but I stopped following them a decade-ish ago after buying the album Dok and realizing there wasn't much room for their sound to evolve within its self-imposed straitjacket.  Any chimpanzee or lemur could theoretically scratch up CDs or LPs and play them back and call it music, and I'm sure someday a record label will put out just such an album, garnering an insightful 7.4 review from a greenhorn Pitchfork scribe hopped up on a tall espresso.

The full album version of "Do While" is 24 minutes long; a music video was made for a drastically shortened version of it named "Do While ⌘X":

In 1995, Popp joined with Jan St. Werner of Mouse On Mars to form the very Oval-esque duo Microstoria.  I believe I got their remix CD Reprovisers in that same Thrill Jockey order in summer '98.  TJ also included a cool promo poster combining album covers by Microstoria (the Init Ding and _Snd album covers), Oval (94Diskont), and I think Mouse On Mars.  I'll have to dig it up and photograph it sometime.

An episode of the show How The States Got Their Shapes ran a fascinating bit last week about a proposed 51st state called Jefferson, which is apparently gaining a lot of momentum.

In addition to a card with an audio clip of the first 15 secs. of this Phil Dunphy quote from the pilot episode of Modern Family, my sister gave me the new issue of GQ for my birthday:

In the article, she mentions that her dad gave her Dostoyevsky's Notes From Underground for her 12th birthday.  She then became legally emancipated form her parents at age 15.  Coincidence?  I tried reading that book a decade or so ago but found it too miserable for me to get very far.

On Saturday & Sunday I started putting in an herb garden in my mom's friend's yard.  On Sunday at Lowe's I got a sweet cactus which I believe is a Mammillaria celsiana or M. muehlenpfordtii, but I can't tell yet.  I also finished up a painting, my first one done on the new easel, during the Super Bowl.  The commercials were incredibly bad.  The Saints (boasting arguably the best offense in NFL history) would've throttled the Patriots (with arguably the worst defense in NFL history), let's not kid ourselves.  Pats diehard Maria Menounos lost a Super Bowl bet and had to wear a Giants bikini in Times Square, so thank you, Mario Manningham.

Planets with similar climates: Nobukazu Takemura - "Icefall" (1999), Replikants - "Agent Oranges (Fancy Mix)" (1994), O.S.T. - "Fe" (2001), Kreidler - "Cube" (1998).