Microstoria - Snd (Mille Plateaux/025, 1996)

mp3 / 320 / 80mb / rs | rel. 1996

Second album by this German duo of Markus Popp (Oval) and Jan St. Werner (Mouse On Mars).

"Like a sound check for the Big Bang, Microstoria's snd simmers at a level just below consciousness and leaves you teetering on the edge of an explosion.

The album's eight tracks screech, swell, hum and bubble like a cat sauntering along an abandoned Moog. Everyday sounds, from the morning alarm clock to a siren passing under a window, swirl through the tracks as if through barely boiling water. Microstoria could be brainwashing you into donating your dog to the Jehovah's Witnesses, and you'd never know. Your conscious mind would be too busy trying to figure out what that noise was or where one track ended and the next began.

Tracks like "Teil Zeit" and "bpi" have no melody, no rhythm, no discernible instruments apart from the (unidentifiable, at least to these ears) electronic pantheon. On the other hand, Microstoria's defiant antistructuralism can be really rather soothing. Notes infiltrate thought and perception; the walls look a little stranger, outside noises become just another element of the composition."-review from Outer Sound