Browse by Artist: MICROSTORIA

Artist:	MICROSTORIA
Title:	Invisible Architecture 03
Label:	AUDIOSPHERE (BELGIUM)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	AS 005CD

"Microstoria is a collaboration between Markus Popp (Oval) and Jan St. Werner (Mouse On Mars). Their common work sounds like an electronic 'soundtrack', destructuring the structures and recomposing, re-inventing new textures to create the perfect melody. Their micro-stories are about new languages, new way of expressing the music itself, guiding it to unknown territories. Through echoing machines, Popp and St. Werner are developing the sound of abstract organicity. Invisible Architecture 04 was recorded at Kaaitheaterstudio, Brussels, summer, 2000. This concert was a longtime awaited event, part of the 'Invisible Architecture' series. This tenuous claim to melodic content -- based on a tidy collage, based on crackles and static, is the testimony of a pure delightful moment."

Artist:	MICROSTORIA
Title:	Improvisors
Label:	SONIG (GERMANY)
Format:	LP
Price:	$10.00
Catalog #:	SONIG 010LP

"Microstoria (Markus Popp and Jan St. Werner) is back on the radar with this six track live album which precedes their upcoming studio album. Improvisers features alternative versions and reconsiderations of tracks from Microstoria's 1996 album, as well as the two new tracks 'Mem Brand' and 'Glocky Bit'. The recordings were made in the fall of 1998 during rehearsals for Cologne's improv and avant-garde music festival, Jack Pohl. Popp and Werner played powerbook, CD-R, and tape effects. Here Microstoria present evergreens and favorites in a more organic and playful way than on their studio recordings. The dispute between 'really' played music and virtually 'playable' music is abandoned for a more detailed, consciously personal analysis of what music can be. Improvisers is the background for a 'read audio' concept. It translates the idea of music into a proposal for a logically modifiable and analyzable system of musical thinking. Improvisers documents an alternative effort to examine strategies in a real world full of irritating consumerism."

Artist:	MICROSTORIA
Title:	Init Ding
Label:	THRILL JOCKEY
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	THR 031CD

Domestic issue of the first Microstoria album, as originally issued on the Mille Plateaux label in Germany. "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 excludes 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 feel, a striking result when viewed in context with their origins. 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 'musical instrument' was increasingly blurred since the 1950s; however, it left the composer in charge of his/her machinery. More recently in the 1990s 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. Atavistic concepts like an instrument end up as a tutorial vocabulary, or in other words a helpful software metaphor. Microstoria has goals and tasks for the near future: music as organized acoustics and music as software."

Artist:	MICROSTORIA
Title:	snd
Label:	THRILL JOCKEY
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	THR 035CD

Second album by this German duo of Markus Popp (Oval) and Jan St. Werner (Mouse On Mars), issued domestically in collaboration with Mille Plateaux. "The 'instruments' used are what could be seen as their successors -- machines and digital technology. Where Oval excludes 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 feel, a striking result when viewed in context with their origins. snd was recorded partly in Berlin and partly in Cologne. Markus and Jan used classical improvisation techniques to create source material for mixing. This recording was done on high end digital equipment utilizing cutting edge digital sound editing as well as instruments and their digitally implemented equivalents. Microstoria concentrates on minute musical details, in order to end up with a smooth succession of carefully sampled soundframes, replayed in 'slow motion'. Microstoria challenges the conventional concept of music. They remove many compositional boundaries. Freed from traditional concepts of time, verse, even structure, Microstoria explores tone and texture, creating depth and form out of abstractions. Subtle tonal changes trigger major alterations in form and 'depth' when juxtaposed. The nature of improvisation is altered by the clear and precise editing decisions. It is this paradoxical arrangement that mirrors the aforementioned paradox of the organic sound/feel of the music and the mechanical origins. Microstoria's music, like many forms of abstraction, reveals its complexion upon close inspection."

Artist:	MICROSTORIA
Title:	Reprovisers
Label:	THRILL JOCKEY
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	THR 042CD

"Microstoria sent tracks to the following artists (C. Schultz & Hajsch, Ui, Violent Onsen Geisha, Mouse On Mars, FX Randomiz, Oval, Stereolab, Jim O'Rourke, Christoph Heemann, Christophe Charles & Nicolas Collins) for a collaborative track. The idea of the project was an extension of the improvisations of Microstoria. A collaboration between two improvisers as opposed to a remix. Bands were to augment the tracks they were sent by playing off of, or with the tracks. Microstoria improvise with machines and then edit to complete a track. They create a variety of tones and then compose in the editing process. They wanted to extend this notion by having their edits further reprised by an additional improvisation and edit. They selected many of the musicians with the thoughts that their music would be different enough to make a significant change to the tone and timbre of Microstoria's music. The results are not only a very interesting listen but exciting in the merging of technical and human elements."

Artist:	MICROSTORIA
Title:	Model 3, Step 2
Label:	THRILL JOCKEY
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	THR 092CD

"Model 3, Step 2 is a new studio album from digital specialists Microstoria, Markus Popp (Oval-innovator of augmented digital audio realities) and Jan St Werner (Mouse on Mars --the world's leading electronic structuralist pop group, and Lithops --the silent power plant of hybrid music arts). Model 3, Step 2 is their most accessible collaboration so far. Still it is utterly impossible to trace their extremely manipulated sounds and compare them to anything else. Did anyone hear the guitar? Considerable time has passed since their critically acclaimed initial releases Init Ding (1995), Snd (1996) and their collaborative CD Reprovisors, in which tracks were rearranged and appropriated by a diverse group of musicians (Stereolab, FX Randomiz, Jim O'Rourke, C-Schulz & Hajsch and others). Popp has been busy writing new Oval music and working with Oval Process software and installations such as Skotodesk and Public Beta. Werner has toured extensively with Mouse on Mars and released several records on his Sonig label. The time apart has allowed them to diversify the source material and compose tracks individually in a much more deliberate way than previously. Model 3, Step 2 consists of nine excursions into the world of downtempo speedcore. On all tracks source material was selected and created by Popp and Werner together. The duo gives to these abstract but always physical bodies of sound by shaping them into a song structure. It is an entirely individual way of understanding and presenting music. Even though their songs are precisely edited and arranged, Microstoria finds empathy among musicians whom play free music or jazz because of the broad tonal range and the shared desire to explore and exploit possibilities."

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