Double LP - Pink and Green Vinyl
Thrill Jockey have pulled together the first two Microstoria albums as one double disc reissue package, which as a document in itself tells part of the compelling story of the post-techno electronic underground of Germany in the 1990s. Jan St. Werner and Markus Popp are essentially household names now, relatively speaking of course, and it's easy to take for granted just how pioneering this music would have sounded on first release. Their particular style of micro-detailed minimalist electronics still sounds unorthodox now, human for it's glitch-y errors, alien for it's moonage vistas. Was anyone other than Derrida batting around the word hauntological in 1995? It wouldn't be an awful way of understanding a records init ding & snd, a texturally rich, almost palimpsestic series of electronic arrangements that seem to stress as much affinity with Kontakte as they do Kontakta, folding all manner of German electronic music history in upon itself. It's hard not to be impressed by this stuff, still original sounding after all this time, still relevant to all manner of contemporary developments in the field (see West Mineral, Motion Ward, 3XL et al). It's more impressive still how even within the fast moving context of electronic music, something nearly 30 years old like this can sound as if the future's still standing on its feet.
