Disquiet

By definition, we will only listen to the track for the first time once. After that, every time the brittle gauze expands and hovers during the opening half of “Ah!” from the forthcoming album O by Oval, we’ll know that the jazz-like instrumentation will soon cut in (MP3). Note: That’s jazz-like, not jazz-light. The minor plinks and planks and the softly shuddering disruptions in that initial haze will be supplanted — as signaled thanks to one fairly firm cymbal clash — by casual drums that sounds like drum’n’bass being played on a rudimentary kit, or like free jazz being constrained by a populist instinct, and by tentatively held chords, like something Herbie Hancock must have tried out when he first laid his piano-trained hands on a Rhodes piano.

That Hancock association may come to mind because O symbolizes a similarly significant shift for the musician who recorded it. Oval is Markus Popp, who is perhaps the musician most associated with “glitch” music, that is with spartan electronica built from all the fidgety mistakes and technical errors we associate with digital technology. Yet with “Ah!” (as on Oh, the new album he has due out on Thrill Jockey at the start of June, his first in close to a decade), almost half of what we hear is anything but digital: it’s all rough, rusty, dusty, “real-world” instrumentation. And rather than cut up recordings of those instruments into something as broken as his glitch music, Oval has those tools display their own herky-jerky tendencies, embracing all their idiosyncratic textural implications.

Full track list at thrilljockey.com. More info on the album Oh here: disquiet.com.

Now, pedal steel players are known for being — wait for the bad joke — slack, but it’s been nearly 10 full years since the estimable Bruce Kaphan released his remarkable solo debut album, Slider. As a member of the band American Music Club, he’d helped cement that group’s ethereal Northern California sound, and on his own he ventured deep into amber waves of slowly undulating audio. From advance description, his belated follow-up, titled Hybrid, due out June 1, is a denser, more varied affair, featuring a host of guest musicians. An initial track has been made available for preview, “Gleaming Towers,” which places his slow soloing above an even slower bass line, light drumming, and layers of atmospheric foundation, as it were (MP3).

Kaphan knows well what he accomplished on Slider, and he warns fans of that album that the new Hybrid may seem less consistent, and therefore may not provide same experience of Slider, but judging by “Gleaming Towers,” it’ll certainly be worth checking out.

One thing that won’t surprise longtime Kaphan listeners is the thoughtfulness that he brings to his creations. Every track on the album is accompanied, on his website, by lengthy annotation, including “Gleaming Towers” (brucekaphan.com), whose genesis he explains in detail. He also directs readers to myspace.com/tbrucebowers, where Bruce Bowers, with whom he appears to have created “Gleaming Towers,” has his own version of the song (under the name “Harvest”).

More on the Hybrid at Kaphan’s website, brucekaphan.com.