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Markus Popp

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Oval, “Romantiq” (Thrill Jockey, 2023)

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This latest album from Markus Popp marks yet another intriguing stylistic detour for his endlessly shapeshifting Oval project, as he delves into “an omnipresent and yet oft ill-defined, even maligned area of music and art–the romantic.” The idea for this album first began as a multimedia collaboration with digital artist Robert Seidel intended for the grand opening of Frankfurt’s German Romantic Museum, but the endeavor soon evolved and expanded beyond the original purpose, as the two artists “sought a more expansive definition of ‘romantic,’ extending outward from the museum’s comprehensive survey of the 19th-century epoch in art.” That said, I suspect only Popp knows how influences from literature, architecture, and visual art helped shape the album, as my ears can only process the final destination and not the journey. In the case of Romantiq, that destination feels like a series of brief vignettes/miniatures assembled from period instrumentation and filtered through Popp’s fragmented and idiosyncratic vision. Given that this is an Oval album, of course, very few of the 19th-century sounds are instantly recognizable as such (aside from some occasional piano), but Popp’s kaleidoscopic and deconstructed homage to the past is a characteristically compelling and intriguingly unique outlier in the Oval canon (and it is often a textural marvel as well).

The album’s description promises a perfume-like experience (“rich scents flooding the senses before evaporating on the breeze”), which feels weirdly apt, as most of the pieces feel like a fleeting impression of something beautiful rather than an intentionally substantial experience (though the album itself is a substantial whole). That approach makes sense given the album’s origins as just one part of a larger installation, yet these pieces do not feel like they are missing anything—they simply feel purposely ephemeral, elusive, and impressionistic. In more concrete terms, many of the pieces sound like a music box made of crystal that has been modified to make its simple melodies unpredictably stammer, smear, and flicker. While that is an admittedly cool baseline aesthetic, the stronger pieces on the album tend to be the ones that enhance that foundation with some kind of inspired addition. For example, the opening “Zauberwort” features both a trombone and a recording of an opera singer unrecognizably “atomized into smoke trails.”

To my ears, the album’s centerpiece is the wonderfully phantasmagoric “Okno,” which feels like a smeared and convulsive orchestral loop dueting with a glass vibraphone, but that description fails to do it justice (it more accurately lies somewhere between “violently remixed film score” and “chopped and screwed rendition of ‘Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy'”). The following “Touha” is quite wonderful as well though, as it approximates a crystalline and psych-damaged variation on Aphex Twin’s Drukqs-era computer-controlled piano pieces. Elsewhere, “Cresta” and “Amethyst” combine for another strong one-two punch, as Popp beautifully elevates his “crystal music box” vision with psychotropic tendrils and a host of burbling, gurgling, and smeared electronic sounds.

Admittedly, there are also a couple of more traditionally piano-centric pieces that do not quite connect with me, but this is otherwise a solid and playfully anachronistic (if modest) album that reaffirms my Oval fandom yet again. Obviously, some Oval releases make a much deeper impact on me than others, yet the recurring theme in Markus Popp’s career continues to be one of bold and continual reinvention. While it has been roughly three decades since he first exploded onto the scene with his groundbreaking “skipping CD” innovations, he continues to focus his formidable production skills on bending and stretching the boundaries of electronic composition and seems to have an almost pathological aversion to ever repeating himself or taking an expected path. While plenty of artists give fans exactly what they want, Popp is one of the rare artists who is far more interested in nudging adventurous listeners towards sounds and ideas that transcend the familiar (like a perfume-esque and partially architecture-inspired fantasia of deconstructed 19th-century romanticism, for example).

Listen here.

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Oval, “Ovidono” (Self-Released, 2021)

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At this point, I consider myself quite well accustomed to Markus Popp’s penchant for bold stylistic reinventions, yet this latest album managed to completely blindside me nevertheless. To be fair, however, Ovidono is not quite a pure Oval album, as Popp is joined by return collaborator Eriko Toyoda and artist/actress Vlatka Alec. The latter, in fact, is responsible for the album’s concept: transforming the poetry of Ovid and Ono No Komachi into sound art that evokes “the tactile, immersive quality and intimacy of ASMR.” 

The trio definitely succeeded in that regard, as Ovidono is probably the finest ASMR-inspired album that I have yet heard, but it is also a bit more ambitious than just a hallucinatory swirl of hushed and sibilant voices. Obviously, that would have been just fine by me too, as Popp is an absolute wizard at chopping and reassembling sounds. However, Ovidono is also quite compelling compositionally, as Alec and Toyoda’s voices are backed by music that lies somewhere between noirish torch song, deconstructed piano jazz, and the uneasy dissonances of Morton Feldman.

The opening “Dormant” does a fine job of setting a suitably bleary, haunted, and hallucinatory mood, as tumbling minor key piano melodies cast a spell of unease beneath a flickering swirl of ghostly whispers. The music reminds me a bit of some of the prepared piano pieces from Aphex Twin’s Drukqs, but a more fluid and melodically sophisticated version. If Ovidono was simply nine subtly nightmarish piano miniatures in the same vein, it would probably be a legitimately excellent album, but “Dormant” feels like a goddamn masterpiece with the added layers of Alec and Toyoda’s seductively hissing, popping, and clicking voices panning around my head. 

Wisely, Popp does not make any drastic changes to that winning formula for the other pieces, but he does vary the tone enough to give each piece its own distinct character. For example, the second piece (“Lost in Thought”) features ghostly flutes and vocals of a more stammering and fluttering nature that seem to dissolve into a rain of clicks and pops. “As I Do” is a bit more of a departure, however, as it initially feels like I am trapped inside a haunted music box with a conspiratorial Japanese ghostess. As it progresses, however, it becomes increasingly spacy and blossoms into an immersively chiming and quivering fantasia of harp-like sweeps and Gilli Smyth-style space whispers.

Yet another highlight is “Feeling,” which evokes a melancholy pianist sadly twinkling his way across the keys in a nearly empty, neon-lit bar (a scene nicely enhanced by the hushed and flickering voices burrowing psychotropically into my subconscious). The closing “Over” is another personal favorite, as Popp’s piano takes a brighter tone that is further warmed by shimmering and droning strings. It has a simple straightforward beauty that I do not normally associate with Popp’s work, but I quite like it and the sibilant swirl of sensuous voices around it makes for good company. The remaining pieces are all similarly strong and offer their own twists, so I expect some of them will someday become favorites as well. Then again, I cannot foresee myself ever having much urge to single out an individual piece, as this entire goddamn album is brilliant.

Samples can be found here.

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Oval, “Scis” (Thrill Jockey, 2020)

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I am hardly unique in this regard, but Markus Popp’s classic run of mid-’90s albums made a huge impression on me, acting as a Rosetta Stone that led me to a world of radical (and also not-so-radical) electronic music far more compelling than the punk and industrial music that I was into at the time. Sadly, I cannot say that I have been a particularly loyal fan over the ensuing two decades, so I did not stick with Popp through his various bold attempts to reinvent his aesthetic. However, his work has never stopped interesting me—it is just that the allure of his earlier work was its perfect balance of bold concept and skilled execution. And, of course, an artist only gets to make a mind-blowing first impression once. 

As a result, later Oval albums simply did not leave a deep impression on me anything like that left by 94 Diskont. That said, there is definitely something to be said for masterful execution on its own and Scis fitfully captures Popp at the absolute height of his powers in that regard (particularly on the second half of the album). While my nostalgia- and expectation-clouded vision makes it impossible to rank this album within Oval’s discography with any degree of objectivity, I feel quite confident in stating that some of the individual songs on Scis easily stand among the finest of Popp’s long career (especially “Mikk”).

I think I can say with absolute certainty that my head would probably explode if I ever tried to fully understand Markus Popp’s creative process, as he has made a career of self-imposed constraints, pushing software to its limits, and manipulating complex webs of loops with surgical precision. On top of that, he is quite a creatively restless guy, so he has no problem cheerfully abandoning a winning formula to attempt something unexpected and totally unfamiliar whenever the inclination strikes him. As such, articulating exactly what sets Scis apart from other Oval releases is no simple task.

That said, Popp has stated that one of his driving objectives on past albums was to “reduce his own visible hand in the music” and that he is now trying to do the opposite through the use of acoustic instruments and “live” performance. I can certainly see evidence of that objective in the comparative looseness and sense of gleeful spontaneity that pervades these pieces, yet that does not make them any less fiendishly complex. Similarly, there are recognizably acoustic instruments throughout the album, such as the piano melody at the heart of the opening “Twirror,” but Popp has used acoustic drums and human vocalists in the past and “Twirror” ultimately erupts into a pummeling maelstrom of electronic beats, buzzing electronic chaos, and electronically gnarled textures. Consequently, the difference is mostly just the balance between those various elements and how they are used. For the most part, Popp juggles those divergent approaches masterfully, though his beats tend to be somewhat rigid and thudding even while the rest of his aesthetic is basically a master class on how to make visionary, forward-thinking electronic music. That is a hurdle of sorts at times, but not an insurmountable one.

Unsurprisingly, one of the perks of Popp’s expanded palette and hybrid software/live approach is that Scis is a remarkably varied album, albeit one that is held together beautifully by its propulsive rhythms and strong melodic focus. In fact, I am morbidly curious about how much material Popp must have discarded, as every single one of these ten songs has a strong enough motif at its core to be strong single. The only indication that Popp was not in an constant state of infallible, white-hot inspiration is that he has a tendency to return again and again to the same dynamic trajectory (a quiet, beatless lead-in that builds to a pounding kick drum crescendo).

That tends to give a number of pieces an overly familiar feel on the first half of the album. It is not ineffective though, even if the power of the percussion overshadows some of the intricacy and beauty of Popp’s dazzling melodic and textural achievements. It feels somewhat akin to a killer jazz ensemble enlisting a muscular rock drummer to transcend genre constraints and expand their appeal. As the album progresses, however, Popp finds some imaginative ways to untether himself from that recurring rhythmic framework.

In “Improg,” for example, Popp keeps the beat buried deep in the mix and periodically allows it to drop out altogether, which serves the delicately plinking and exhalation-like music quite nicely. Moreover, when the piece inevitably does increase in rhythmic intensity, the drums are periodically overpowered by a stammering and garbed melodic hook. Elsewhere, Popp organically balances the clattering and pounding percussion crescendo in “Piqqo” with an escalating surge of gorgeously blooping and swooning synth tones. The album’s strongest piece (“Mikk”) even goes one step further, bulldozing over its climactic beat explosion with an intense, throbbing pulse and a spark-throwing onslaught of skipping and distressed loops.

After being struck by how much I loved some of the pieces on Scis, I decided to go back and re-listen to some other recent Oval albums and realized that I had woefully underappreciated several of them. More significantly, I belatedly realized that it is frankly amazing that just one person (mostly) is responsible for such a varied and visionary body of work, as Popp’s oeuvre represents a truly improbable convergence of conceptual genius, tight songcraft, strong melodic sensibility, creative arrangements, and production mastery that blurs the lines between several genres.

All of those elements are in ample abundance on Scis, which adds up to a legitimately dazzling and vibrant batch of songs. Moreover, Popp’s curious approach to percussion seems to be a deliberate and subversive one, as he notes that he approached beats as an “instrumentalist rather than a beat-maker.” On its face, that is an enigmatic statement, but I believe it means that he views drums like a classical composer views a timpani: there are actual grooves in every song, but they are used to more for shifts in dynamic intensity that as an end unto themselves.

That said, I still wish those beats were more fluid and a bit less overpowering (a feat achieved only on “Oxagon”), as the music on Scis is hook-filled, nuanced, and playfully experimental enough to make this a near-masterpiece. In its current form, that likely means that there are a handful of songs that I will likely play to death, but Scis is an album that is absolutely screaming for a remix treatment: all of the greatness is there, but several of these songs could use a bit more space and rhythmic fluidity to realize their full potential. Until that happens, however, Scis is a very strong album that reminds me exactly why I was—and should continue to be—a devoted fan of Popp’s work.

Samples can be found here.