Oval - Systemisch

Earlier this year BBC 6 Music’s Stuart Maconie featured Systemisch by German electronic group Oval during one of his Sunday Evening “Freak Zone” hours. I was so enamoured with it that I immediately got my e-hands on a copy and it became a popular accompaniment to revision for my finals in May. Oval’s other work is a mixture of styles. From the aggressive ambience of 1995’s 94 Diskont to the Haschuka-esqe, prepared piano inspired sounds of 2010’s O, they have remained pioneers of ambient/glitch. In an era of digital synth patches, sequencers and cheap home recording equipment, the ambient genre has been one which has flourished in the internet driven world as artists have found themselves with the tools available to make convincing, if not terribly inventive music at home.

Perhaps then this is what makes Systemisch so appealing in that it was written largely by purposely deforming, scratching and even marking CD’s with felt tip pens to blend existing recordings into something quite different. The result is an ostensibly ambient album, but one whose existence rests on the familiar glitch skipping sound of a CD that most of us who regularly used a Discman or still buy CD’s are familiar with. The work behind the more rhythmic tracks such as “Catchy DAAD” and “Gabba Nation” unveil intricate attention to detail which combines what can only be the tediously exhausting work of mutilating CD’s to fit the correct tempo and feel required to a song with the inherent musicality of creating a pleasant sounds track overall. Other tracks such as “Schoner Wossen” blend different repetitive tracks with one another to create polyrhythms, where others like “Oval Office” focus more on moody ambience in a Boards of Canada vein. The result is an album that is as enjoyable for not only it’s sound, but also because the listener is aware that it was a product of what must have been hours of incredibly hard work.

Systemisch is more than a traditional ambient album. It has a special quality that sets it apart from the many thousands of other albums that came after it, because of what it represents. It required much more than what many ambient artists today have to put in to create an album from scratch. Whilst in many ways the tone and the feel is one that could be easily recreated today, its age and its circumstances have, and should earn it a place in the hearts of any discerning fan. But it is not a traditional album and understandably many may find the constant skipping sound extremely annoying. However, it is a testament to what real “blue sky” thinking can produce; when individuals put their mind to creating something unconventional, but inspired. (Even If it’s not quite as impressive as the Sun Centred Theory of the Universe or the Theory of Relativity, and other dull stuff like that.)