O, by Oval

O

by Oval

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
2xCD version comes packaged in a mini-LP style gatefold jacket available in three different colors and features 20 tracks on Disc 1 and 50 tracks on Disc 2

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O 2xCD (US Version, Pink Cover)
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O 2xCD (US Version, Blue Cover)
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O 2xCD (US Version, Green Cover)
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1.	Panorama 03:47	buy track
2.	Ah! 04:03	buy track
3.	Shhh 01:19	buy track
4.	Glossy 02:40	buy track
5.	Stop Motion 01:07	buy track
6.	Sky 02:29	buy track
7.	Beige 01:34	buy track
8.	Brahms Mania 04:08	buy track
9.	Cinematic 02:12	buy track
10.	Cry 03:31	buy track
11.	Cottage 01:44	buy track
12.	I Heart Musik 03:22	buy track
13.	Salamanca 01:37	buy track
14.	Dolo 04:42	buy track
15.	Dricas 01:07	buy track
16.	Cyprus 03:16	buy track
17.	Vessel 01:50	buy track
18.	Dynamo 03:07	buy track
19.	Finis 01:32	buy track
20.	Emocor 02:19	buy track
21.	Citibike 01:15	buy track
22.	Oslo 00:54	buy track
23.	Ij 00:53	buy track
24.	Rivo 02:05	buy track
25.	Pomp 00:49	buy track
26.	Blinky 01:15	buy track
27.	Parallax 00:47	buy track
28.	Koral 01:42	buy track
29.	Kolor 01:03	buy track
30.	Auto Matic 01:36	buy track
31.	Dream Over 01:28	buy track
32.	Pastell 01:31	buy track
33.	Magnify 00:47	buy track
34.	Drift 01:58	buy track
35.	Allover 01:33	buy track
36.	Derby 01:41	buy track
37.	Flax 01:22	buy track
38.	Bergen Best 01:49	buy track
39.	Matinée 01:42	buy track
40.	Kukicha 02:10	buy track
41.	6 AM 01:29	buy track
42.	Flamingo 01:11	buy track
43.	Rivo II 00:58	buy track
44.	Goodbye 01:27	buy track
45.	Fontan 01:28	buy track
46.	Co-Echo 00:35	buy track
47.	Stop Motion II 01:21	buy track
48.	Vitesse 01:20	buy track
49.	September 00:47	buy track
50.	Voilà 01:21	buy track
51.	Vegas Top 01:20	buy track
52.	Expo 01:04	buy track
53.	Lonely 00:31	buy track
54.	Java 02:15	buy track
55.	Klack 00:32	buy track
56.	Project Evergreen 01:05	buy track
57.	Rainyday 00:43	buy track
58.	Big City Nights 00:45	buy track
59.	Rosammie 01:03	buy track
60.	Gallo 01:08	buy track
61.	May Tea 00:58	buy track
62.	Chronograph 00:35	buy track
63.	Jank 00:58	buy track
64.	Breezy 01:31	buy track
65.	Press 00:36	buy track
66.	Form Faktor 01:05	buy track
67.	Terminal 01:03	buy track
68.	Karo 01:06	buy track
69.	Swiss Summer 01:10	buy track
70.	Happyend 01:22	buy track

about

“A triumphant return for Oval, both musically and intellectually. This is meta music for the soul.” - FACT Magazine

“Where there used to be glitches and electronic noise there are now guitars and drums. But that is the least important thing on “O”. What is truly relevant, his distinguished past aside, is that Oval has done it. Again. He has given birth to a record that could and should change the route of modern music.” - Playgroundmag.net

"It's one mark of genius that the more you try to be different, the more you sound like yourself. It's wrong to overstate the continuities over the immediately obvious difference, but this music could only have been made by one man.” - Wire

“Incredibly, through a ten-year gap, complete shift in approach, software and even ideology, Popp has still managed to make what still sounds like an Oval album – possibly the best one of his career.” - Exclaim.ca

“The floating, lively and energetic music on these two formats simply cannot be passed over this year. Reinventing yourself can hardly be done any better.” - De:Bug

“To call Oval an electronic music pioneer is like saying James Joyce ‘kinda did things with novels.’” - The Stool Pigeon

“That Popp is able to work all these elements into anything remotely rhythmic is testament to his programming skills; that the end result is so endlessly listenable, is miraculous. “New start” or not, O is a work of vibrant and often brutal beauty that proves good things really do come to those who wait.” - The Quietus

“The new Oval sounds clean and quick, with each pluck, quiver, and beat standing out in stark relief... O is not a retro move, but the work of an artist dealing with the now.” - Dusted

“A guitar dangling over his shoulder and equipped with a remarkably unconventional approach to harmony, Popp is doing things his own way, walking hand in hand with his laptop and finding the perfect medium between personal expression and computer-aided composition.” - Tokafi.com

“Listened to closely, each track reveals a precise and jewel-like structure, while in it totality, O refuses any intimation of form that might restrict the experience of listening to it. With its constant changes in tempo, O appears to stretch time elastically, becoming seemingly endless.” - BBC Music Review

“It's lovely, it's pleasantly unsettling... It takes a very different route from his earlier work. If it ends up in a very similar place that just suggests his musical sensibilities have been asserting themselves all along.” - Pitchfork

“Popp is smart enough to achieve the unheard, deft enough to have a signature sound without doing the same thing over and over again. Like Eno 20-plus years ago, his work is not only superlative, fascinating and totally listenable, it’s a template for future research.” - Mike McGonigal

Popp, who lives and works in Berlin, took some time between his last release under the moniker SO and the "Oh" EP because he wanted the new material to be a radical departure from his old concepts and methods on all levels, to essentially be a second "debut" album. For "O" Popp's creative process shares nothing with his creative process for prior Oval albums. Previously, Popp focused on the creation of the programs that would process sound and effectively create the music. As a musician, Popp's process was more theoretical in nature. Creating the platform and knowing what that platform could and should do to the sound sources. He selected the sound sources and then turned it over to the platform. For ”O”, Popp uses an instrument that is very common, a stock PC outfitted with stock sounds and plugins. He no longer uses or creates a custom platform, but instead utilizes a readily available instrument. What he has done with this instrument highlights Popp's, perhaps for the first time, musicianship. Popp spent years woodshedding with his instrument and worked diligently to push the instrument beyond its normal sonic boundaries.

What is striking to note is that while the sound sources, and the process versus musician aspect of the music could not be more different, the resulting music shares qualities with the music that came before. It can be heard in the tempo and in the timbre. While the musician in Oval was formerly secondary to the process, now it is the primary creative element and his evolution as a musician can be clearly followed. Popp is often credited with creating the clicks and cuts genre of electronic music. Now this genre defining artist is putting forth the musician that was hiding behind the technician.

The result is a celebration in delicacy and detail: handcrafted polyrhythmic phrases, riffs and structures, bristling with tiny resonances. Popp is celebrating rhythms, scales and harmonies on a small and large scale, instead of reveling in theory and meta-discourse. The performances on this record represent a high level of skill on his instrument, while the resulting music is striking, compelling, and ultimately rewarding. "O", named for a new beginning, (ground zero if you will) is just that, fresh and new. (The EP title was a playful word game based around the album title.) The album, made after years of practice, is for Popp about the music. It is not about the impetus to start playing or some theoretical exercise in “programmed vs. played” or “new Oval vs. old Oval”. These comparisons, for him, are meaningless.

On Disc 1, the ten longer pieces range from delicate, sophisticated pop to brutally torn, electro-acoustic riffing full of angular, colliding guitar sounds. All of the songs are peppered with expressive and open drumming. Interestingly the tracks were not built around a rhythm. The drum playing was an organic part of the song evolutions, being written at various points during each individual song's recordings.

Disc 2 features no less than 50 concise, highly detailed pieces that are a conscious nod to the culture of instant gratification. Attentions spans are noticeably changed and the culture of organic discovery is gone from the mainstream and replaced by a hunger for the new. Consumption and criticism at warp speed. Portability dominates the art form to an extent never before seen. These tracks represent Popp’s personal challenge to create pieces within a constrained framework that addresses this aspect of music culture. Popp has even referred to these pieces as ringtones. These one-minute tracks have a melodic finesse and associative power that are unexpected under such constraints and are ripe for future sampling projects.

“O” is Markus Popp’s long-overdue and deeply personal love letter to music. It’s for the listener a new chapter in a fascinating, ongoing critical dialog with music by one of the true innovators of contemporary audio.

credits

released September 16, 2010

Written and produced by Markus Popp
Published by Random Noize Musick / Budde Music
Cover design: Frieda Luczak

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about

Oval Berlin, Germany

Trailblazing glitch masterpieces (1990s), delicate, hyperreal, futuristic post-rock vignettes (after 2010), now even club bangers with a twist (2016) - Oval continues to be a celebration of innovation, skill & sensibility. With an undeniable instinct for the pleasantly irritating, the drastic & the dreamy, M. Popp keeps on pushing the envelope. No one out there plays the computer quite like him. ... more

popppopppopp.com

discography

Romantiq

May 2023
Ovidono

Dec 2021
Scis

Jan 2020
Eksploio

Nov 2019

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O

by Oval

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

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O 2xCD (US Version, Blue Cover)
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

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O 2xCD (US Version, Green Cover)
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credits

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tags

Tags

about

discography

contact / help

Streaming + Download

€10 EUR or more

Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

$17 USD or more

Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

$23 USD or more

O 2xCD (US Version, Pink Cover)
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

O 2xCD (US Version, Blue Cover)
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

O 2xCD (US Version, Green Cover)
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album