CD – Uovooo

Markus Popp, the seminal glitch poet who operates under the moniker Oval, returns with a concept album. Popp, is not to be understanding according to the usual procedures conferred by that genre and not even as a brand of an established style. Of course it is not a pop record. Quoting the author, the intent would seem to be a turning point that evolves from the hyper-detailed and improvisational style of the beginning to a new sequencing. The composer contemplated oldskool tricks and beat-making. Describing the experience of making Popp he says, “working on these new club tracks was like going from cucina povera (a 1990s student-budget glitch style) and hi-tech fusion cuisine (post-2010) to feeling like a vegan” at last “who just stumbled into a barbecue seminar”. The storytelling is not entirely adventurous and the flow is pleasant and smooth, with post-R&B influences that always return to an authorial easy listening, full of meandering melodies and optimistic, kaleidoscopic soulful treatments. Frequencies authentically glitch and click’n’cuts pass like water under the bridge, becoming a shining example of how the real changes in taste and style, those that have a profound effect on our “listening habits,” happen mainly in the sphere of everyday life, transforming from purely experimental to less conceptual and idealised soundscapes. The album is released by Uovooo, a new label developed by Markus Popp to fascinate and surprise today’s listeners. These sound combinations lose only a little of their earliest innovative force but gain in communication and impact, working on that particular gap – a rather static inflexibility – inherited from the previous loop-based production.

 

Oval – Popp