Microstoria

Microstoria emerged as a collaborative side project pairing Oval’s Markus Popp with Jan St. Werner from Mouse on Mars. Their work fused Oval’s signature preoccupation with scarred compact discs and Mouse on Mars’s unconventional instrumentation alongside its airy, gently unresolved structures, yielding results that aligned closely with expectations. The duo launched its recorded output via two albums on Germany’s Mille Plateaux imprint, material that occupied a midpoint between the more approachable techno-exotica associated with St. Werner’s primary band and the occasionally severe abstraction typical of Popp’s projects. Both albums later appeared in reissues from the Stateside post-rock label Thrill Jockey, home to Tortoise, Rome, and Trans Am; the same imprint also issued the 1997 remix collection Reprovisers. Three years afterward came Model 3 Step 2.