O

From his music alone, Oval's Markus Popp always seemed the most professorial of the experimental techno crowd in the '90s, but he left the academy, so to speak, with barely a backward glance, early in the 2000s. In that light, his return in 2010 with an EP (Oh) and the LP O are most welcome. His methods have changed remarkably, although the results haven't. Where he used custom gear in the past, he's traded it in for off-the-shelf processing software. Technology must have caught up with him, though, since he's easily able to conjure the sound of Oval -- warm drones and string plucks that are sliced and diced with the cold rigor that Buñuel and Dalí applied to an Andalusian eyeball. The big difference on this two-disc set, however, is the occasional, recognizable drum pattern, mostly snare strikes or cymbal crashes, that give the rest of the music a wider dynamic range. The first disc is a 20-track monolith of bucolic digitalia, much like Popp's earlier landmarks 94Diskont and Systemische. The second disc, however, includes 50 tracks of what Popp refers to as ringtones -- "concise, highly detailed pieces that are a conscious nod to the culture of instant gratification." ~ John Bush