Search - Microstoria :: Model 3 Step 2

Among the brigade of electronic musicians who make music out of crunches, crackles, and glitchy digital errors, Markus Popp and Jan St. Werner still manage to make the results very warm sounding. This is the fourth release from the Cologne duo, and it sounds very much like a cross between their other projects. Popp's solo work as Oval is in some ways even further from the conventional, sometimes consisting entirely of what sounds like skipping CDs, whereas St. Werner's Mouse on Mars still traffic very much in song structure and dance rhythms, however subversively. On this release, Microstoria create some of their most abstract music yet--the melodies and song structures are very elusive, as if half seen through a mist. There are melodic keyboard snippets snaking their way through most pieces but also lots of hissing and crackles, some of which sound accidental, others like someone deliberately twisting a knob as far as it will go to observe the results. There are no dance beats to be found and hardly any percussion rhythms at all. Not a record that hits the listener over the head, but a very intriguing one. --Bob Bannister