Microstoria is a side project of Oval's Markus Popp and Jan St. Werner of Mouse on Mars. Combining Oval's fetish for CD scarification with MoM's odd instrumentation and breezy, subtlely inchoate arrangements, the pair's combined efforts come off much as one might expect. The group debuted with a pair of albums on the German Mille Plateaux label falling somewhere between the more engaging techno-exotica of St. Werner's main focus and the sometimes gruelling abstraction of Popp's. Both releases were reissued by Stateside post-rock imprint Thrill Jockey (Tortoise, Rome, Trans Am), which also released the remix effort Reprovisers in 1997. Model 3 Step 2 was issued three years later. ~ Sean Cooper, Rovi