Every once in a while, I find a record that causes me to hear music in a new way. One of my most profound examples is a Microstoria release that has an Oval remix called "Microstoria Runtime Engine" on one side and Stereolab's mix of "Endless Summer NAMM" on the other. I picked up this unassuming 12" used a few years ago, just before a long weekend when, for some reason, most people close to me were out of town. During those blessed three days of solitude, I listened to that Oval remix probably twenty times, and my amazement grew with each spin.

Drawing elements from five different Microstoria tracks, Oval's Markus Popp (who was, in a sense, remixing himself since he comprises one half of Microstoria with Mouse on Mars' Jan St. Werner) created with "Runtime Engine" a piece that was both the most "digital" track I'd heard and the most organic. The way the various clicks, buzzes and drones were organized, "Runtime Engine" didn't sound "played" by something living, but seemed to be some kind of life in itself. The image that came to me during the first few listens was a heavily magnified film of cells diving in the womb. As the various loops interacted with and built upon each other, the components remained the same but swelled according to some strange underlying algorithm. And this precise arrangement of seemingly random electrical impulses struck me as very beautiful.

I still put on "Runtime Engine" every month or so (it's also on the Microstoria remix album Reprovisiors), and it hasn't lost its luster. But there is a downside to this kind of listening transformation. I've spent the years since digesting clicks, cuts, glitches and squirms in search of something with similar personal impact, and it's hard to come by. This exploration has led me through the complete catalogs of both Microstoria and Oval, and still, nothing for me matches "Runtime Engine" for sheer wonder.

Model 3, Step 2 is Microstoria's first studio album since 1996's snd, and while it's very good, it falls short of that highly subjective ideal. Still, this is a fine collection of warm, glitchy ambience that should appeal to admirers of abstract electronics. Much more subdued than Oval's more recent efforts, and more random than St. Werner's solo work as Lithops, Microstoria find a happy medium of strange, nervous, consistently surprising atmospheres. Drawing from similar sound sources as Ovalprocess (sampled guitar buzz digitally stretched to its limit, oddly percussive texture shifts, manipulated organ chords), Microstoria construct an alien, yet still oddly familiar environment.

One reason I think Microstoria is lost on people is that they think of it as "ambient" music to be played quietly while doing something else. Quite the contrary, music this dependant on detail demands to be played loudly, preferably through a decent stereo or headphones. "Glocky Bit" features layer upon layer of delicate sound buried beneath its bass-heavy synth chords. These tiny repeating melodies hover several leagues beneath the more menacing surface, adding levity to the outwardly oppressive foreground.

The distantly pop "Flexen" is a glowing drone constantly bumped off track by digital clicks, and only at volume can one hear just how. Close your eyes and crank "Paro Fadeout" and you'll swear you're floating in the ocean, listening to a whale trying to speak the language of a submarine. Model 3, Step 2 may not represent a paradigm shift, but it deserves to be heard.

-Mark Richard-San