email interview excerpt with caleb k

from an e-mail interview with caleb.k from sydney toward a phd thesis on cracked and broken media in contemporary audio. the interview is directed at the context from which oval evolved.

when you were
first a part of oval,
what sort of music
were you listening to?

i guess its safe to say that we were mostly listening to pop music in various genres. my personal favourites at this time were mostly guitar oriented pop music, bands from creation records, my bloody valentine, revolving paint dream etc; prefab sprout an alltime favourite. but it was an unwritten law at this time that we didnt try to sound like anything we knew. markus liked more different styles of music but i think he stopped buying records for listening to them basically at the time when we recorded our first album (in fact ii did the same later on). frank recently published a list of his alltime favourite tracks in a fanzine*, so you can get a idea.
later on markus literately rented every cd from a cd-rental service around the corner; played everything in fast forward, painted the cds, took 1:1 samples and brought them back. in practice we had no relation to the material and seldom really knew where the material originated when we used it.

where do you think
oval came from
in this regard...
i.e. dance music, art,
the avant-garde?

i think we tried from the beginning to focus not on one function of music. there were some shy love affairs with dance music, but we never did a dance track. markus brought in a theoretical background, frank an art background, me mostly an conceptual and technical background. nobody ever considered himself as a musican at this time, we also never had a formal training in playing an instrument.

do you think
what you were doing in 93-95
was a truly radical gesture?
and did it spring
from something new
or from ideas
which were in the air?

at this time i really wasnt into electronic music at all; so i always thought there would be hundreds of other projects doing similar things. but in fact we never had any contacts to similar projects. we always worked with the labels which were the most interesting at the time (ata tak for wohnton; mille plateaux for systemisch and diskont), but in fact we never had much contact with the other artists.
in fact things which influenced me a lot were graphic design programs like photoshop and after effects. they provided an abstract view on handling digital material which were completely new at this time. note that we worked with just a midi sequencer (atari cubase), a sampler (yamaha tx16w) and an 8-track tape recorder at this time. not that we literally used these programs to generate music (this wouldnt have led to interesting sounds), but the concepts influenced me more than the musical things i encountered.
the digital revolution happened in graphic design a couple of years earlier, so at the moment the tools arrived in the audio domain, we knew what we had to expect.

where did the name 'oval'
come from??
i haven't seen this
mentioned anywhere...

we liked the archetypical, rather mathematical implications as well as the idea of a round shape. it is a four letter word. it is a very common word, although you really newer use it in daily life.
one of my earliest audiovisual synesthesia experiences was the oval-shaped CBS-logo rotating around its center at the label of the record when i played some of my mothers albums.
but thats of course thats my personal view on our name.
i guess the meaning of oval is the same in german as in english; except that from the german point the sound of the word is a little more "round" than from the english pont of view.

i came upon the word while looking through swedish famzines. although swedish has some similarities to german, it is impossible to read without knowing the language. at one point i stopped at the word "orval". i was tempted to think that "orval" would be a perfect band name (whatever that means), but then i realized that "oval" was the much better choice.
we picked it easily as the best idea.

back to oval


	from an e-mail interview with caleb.k from sydney toward a phd thesis on cracked and broken media in contemporary audio. the interview is directed at the context from which oval evolved.
when you were first a part of oval, what sort of music were you listening to?	i guess its safe to say that we were mostly listening to pop music in various genres. my personal favourites at this time were mostly guitar oriented pop music, bands from creation records, my bloody valentine, revolving paint dream etc; prefab sprout an alltime favourite. but it was an unwritten law at this time that we didnt try to sound like anything we knew. markus liked more different styles of music but i think he stopped buying records for listening to them basically at the time when we recorded our first album (in fact ii did the same later on). frank recently published a list of his alltime favourite tracks in a fanzine*, so you can get a idea. later on markus literately rented every cd from a cd-rental service around the corner; played everything in fast forward, painted the cds, took 1:1 samples and brought them back. in practice we had no relation to the material and seldom really knew where the material originated when we used it.
where do you think oval came from in this regard... i.e. dance music, art, the avant-garde?	i think we tried from the beginning to focus not on one function of music. there were some shy love affairs with dance music, but we never did a dance track. markus brought in a theoretical background, frank an art background, me mostly an conceptual and technical background. nobody ever considered himself as a musican at this time, we also never had a formal training in playing an instrument.
do you think what you were doing in 93-95 was a truly radical gesture? and did it spring from something new or from ideas which were in the air?	at this time i really wasnt into electronic music at all; so i always thought there would be hundreds of other projects doing similar things. but in fact we never had any contacts to similar projects. we always worked with the labels which were the most interesting at the time (ata tak for wohnton; mille plateaux for systemisch and diskont), but in fact we never had much contact with the other artists. in fact things which influenced me a lot were graphic design programs like photoshop and after effects. they provided an abstract view on handling digital material which were completely new at this time. note that we worked with just a midi sequencer (atari cubase), a sampler (yamaha tx16w) and an 8-track tape recorder at this time. not that we literally used these programs to generate music (this wouldnt have led to interesting sounds), but the concepts influenced me more than the musical things i encountered. the digital revolution happened in graphic design a couple of years earlier, so at the moment the tools arrived in the audio domain, we knew what we had to expect.
where did the name 'oval' come from?? i haven't seen this mentioned anywhere...	we liked the archetypical, rather mathematical implications as well as the idea of a round shape. it is a four letter word. it is a very common word, although you really newer use it in daily life. one of my earliest audiovisual synesthesia experiences was the oval-shaped CBS-logo rotating around its center at the label of the record when i played some of my mothers albums. but thats of course thats my personal view on our name. i guess the meaning of oval is the same in german as in english; except that from the german point the sound of the word is a little more "round" than from the english pont of view. i came upon the word while looking through swedish famzines. although swedish has some similarities to german, it is impossible to read without knowing the language. at one point i stopped at the word "orval". i was tempted to think that "orval" would be a perfect band name (whatever that means), but then i realized that "oval" was the much better choice. we picked it easily as the best idea.