pre/commers

Oval are often remembered for their second and third albums, Systemisch and 94Diskont, which makes sense, in some ways – these were the two albums where they monopolised on the glitches in destabilised digital audio, giving birth, coincidentally, to an entire genre of music. But they’re not Oval’s strongest albums in this field – Markus Popp’s compositions really came to fruition across the turn of the century, where his process felt even more rigorous, and less bound to discourses of subversion. pre/commers was a Japanese-only release, but it sits neatly alongside its peers, commers and process, as an album where Popp’s compositions became infinitely richer, flooding the sensorium with waves and downpourings of notched, crackling, tensile electronic textures. It does sound like there’s a duck lost somewhere in “tweakk,” though.