Try listening to Brian Eno's Music for Airports in choppy RealAudio. Hear that? Digital clicks, random bursts of static, and underwater compression swim over icy electronic drones, numbing your mind into a state of paralysis. Now imagine spending $12 for it. That's the Oval experience in a nutshell. Yet, diehard fans of the squirm genre hold Markus Popp's artful manipulation in the highest regard.

Ovalprocess is Popp's fifth full-length since his 1994 debut, Systemisch. He's also released several EPs and recorded with Mouse on Mars' Jan St. Werner under the moniker Microstoria. But despite attempts by this album's press release to convince listeners that its "tones are Oval's most extreme sound sources to date," and almost laughably, that it qualifies as "a rock and roll record," there are no discernable differences between Ovalprocess and the bulk of Popp's other work. Whereas squirm artists like Mouse on Mars, Autechre, and To Rococo Rot have borrowed Popp's digital-skip techniques and incorporated them into more advanced and creative forms, Oval remains stagnant, repeatedly issuing interchangeable albums that bear all the appeal of smoothed-over modem noise.

But this record is a departure by Oval's standards. Rather than falling back on his usual electronically transformed field recordings, he now uses original sound sources. But when the record is comprised of misfiring, eighth-of-a-second sample triggers, can a difference actually be distinguished? Uh, not really. The major difference between Ovalprocess and Popp's other work is that, in keeping with trendy recent releases from the Sonig and Mille Plateaux labels, it features a slightly "warmer" sound. Essentially, there are more low-pitched hums, seemingly accidental squeals and drawn-out farty noises.

Still, I'll even take the fluorescent sterility of Dok over this, if only because every squirm act is shooting for that same Nuno Canavarro-inspired element of humanity now. It's as commonplace in 2000 as raw minimalism was three years ago. All electronic music is stamped with an invisible expiration date-- its lifespan is roughly equivalent to an unopened can of Coke. If you're a groundbreaking artist on a cutting edge German imprint, it won't take long before every other artist in your camp starts copping your ideas. Warmth in electronic music has already lost three-quarters of its carbonation, and Oval isn't helping matters by leaving the can open on his coffeetable overnight.

Popp hasn't even put in the extra ounce of effort it takes to title his songs. And why bother? There's not a standout cut worthy of mention on all of Ovalprocess. You get 11 tracks-- and, after 25 minutes of silence, a virtually identical 10-minute bonus track-- of glitch-enhanced ProTools effects and engineered analog feedback.

As always, Ovalprocess isn't bad for what it is, but it's certainly not clever anymore. At this point, Markus Popp might as well be Agnostic Front for the amount of innovation and creative thought his records take to produce. But not even. At least Agnostic Front have to come up with ways to rephrase the same lyrics they've written 100 times. Oval just sits down and, from the sound of it, lets his self-written audio software application do the work. Of course, in the grand scheme of things, it's no better and no worse than any of his other releases. But if you're gonna buy anything by him, why not go for Systemisch? At least it was a new idea in 1994.

-Ryan Schreiber