https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mFDnw_AEa_AfH8cE9QTfuYRW7QE0jufao&si=_0gpDCE8c3mIIOdX

all tracks by Jan St. Werner, Markus Popp

Editor's info:

Description: Microstoria is a collaboration between Markus Popp (Oval) and Jan St. Werner (Mouse On Mars). The resulting music is an electronic soundtrack, not without structure, not without melody. The "instruments " used are what could be seen as their successors- machines and digital technology. Where Oval excudes authorship of music, Microstoria explores authorship, especially in relation to improvisation. The tones used in composition are mechanized,yet paradoxically rich. The resulting pieces are organic in feal, a striking result when viewed in context with their origions.

Once instruments were physical entities connecting the creative individual through tuition and technical skill to the almost metaphysical world of music. The distinction between computing device and a "musical instrument" was increasingly blurred since the 1950's; however, it left the composer in charge of his/her machinery. More recently in the 1990's things have merged into one computer-based (formerly "programmable" or "computer controlled") authoring environment-still fully capable of hosting the residual "old" music media as well as its terminology. The transition from the 50's perspective to the 90's put an already well introduced component of music production newly into focus: software-rendering the composer the designer. Atavisitic concepts like an instrument end up as a tutorial vocabulary, or in other words a helpful software metaphore. Microstoria has goals and tasks for the near future: music as organized acoustic and music as software.

Few records have weathered the fast-moving, fickle trends in electronic music like those of Microstoria. The duo brings together two of the most prescient, playful minds in the German electronic underground - Jan St. Werner (Mouse on Mars) and Markus Popp (Oval). Their albums as Microstoria are considered foundational texts in ambient music while equally sounding just as cutting-edge now as on their initial release. Continually cropping up in "best of" lists from the likes of Pitchfork and FACT while finding new fans through remixes by Jim O"Rouke and Stereolab.
After being long out of print and coveted by collectors, the duo"s cult classic albums init ding and _snd now receive the expanded reissue treatment as a double LP, featuring remixed sleeve artwork based on the original designs and a full remaster of each by engineer Rashad Becker. Microstoria"s creative process was as much about careful listening as composing, the duo working in a dialogue with their machines. Their first outing init ding (1995) captures the thrilling, anarchic energy of Germany"s experimental underground in the 90s, rendered in beautifully understated atmospheres. In those early studio sessions, Popp and Werner would cycle through synthesizer patches and effects settings while playing, sounds glitching and taking on new shapes with each turn to create moments of genuine surprise. Throughout the album the duo wrest paradoxically organic sounds from digital instruments, with everything from bird-like calls to aqueous washes of bass or fizzing strings that crest like rolling waves of warm analog thrum. The duo"s sophomore album _snd (1996) provided a subtle refinement of those earlier recordings, stripping back the dense layers of texture to play with space and tension, with an even greater contrast between light and dark.
The album finds comfort in colder, deliberately digital soundscapes - the sound of neon lights illuminating the empty concrete of the city at night, or dial-u.......
more