Oval

With an unde­ni­able instinct for the pleas­antly irri­tat­ing, the dras­tic and the dreamy, Popp pio­neered “glitch” and “clicks & cuts” – and con­tin­ues to inspire and pro­voke a new gen­er­a­tion of musi­cians to this day.

Past achieve­ments

The dis­tinc­tive, organic appeal of Popp’s tracks, remixes and albums are often regarded as water­shed moments for the entire genre. Many of his songs have been described as time­less, haunt­ing clas­sics, earn­ing him crit­i­cal acclaim world­wide – as well as the occa­sional art award here and there. (Oval-process, his cus­tom, software-based, mul­ti­plat­form project won 2^nd prize at ARS ELECTRONICA 2001).
Popp has con­stantly refined his sig­na­ture style and instantly rec­og­niz­able aes­thet­ics in sev­eral musi-cal col­lab­o­ra­tions, most notably with the long-running projects MICROSTORIA (duo with Mouse On Mars’ Jan St. Werner) and SO (with Japan­ese song­writer extra­or­di­naire Eriko Toy­oda). Popp has also worked for/with: BJÖRK, RYUICHI SAKAMOTO, TORTOISE, MOUSE ON MARS, SQUAREPUSHER, PIZZI-CATO 5, GASTR DEL SOL etc.
Lesser-known facts: Popp’s music video for Mouse On Mars’ “Twift” (1995), made entirely inside a (then) cutting-edge 3D-videogame engine/SDK, could be called proto-Machinima. Popp has contri-buted to video games & inter­ac­tive appli­ca­tions: he con­tributed an entire secret bonus stage in Tet-suya Mitsuguchi’s vision­ary, abstract shooter REZ (SEGA/SONY). Popp has also done orig­i­nal sound track work for art house movies as well as for adver­tis­ing (Har­mony Korine, Darko Drag­ice­vic, Masa-ko Tanaka, Armani, Comme Des Gar­cons, Prada etc).

A new Oval sound — he only changed EVERYTHING

With the “Oh” EP (06/2010) and the sub­se­quent dou­ble CD “O” (09/2010), both released on Thrill Jockey Records, Popp opens up an entirely new chap­ter in his ongo­ing crit­i­cal dia­log with music. And it’s a sur­prise move: this arrest­ing, 101-track extrav­a­ganza is truly a rad­i­cal depar­ture and yet once again chal­leng­ing music-as-we-know-it – but this time, things hap­pen on music’s own turf.
Out of nowhere, Popp debuts as a pro­ducer of unex­pected ver­sa­til­ity beyond the elec­tronic music arena. “O” is a wild ride – explor­ing a wide range from del­i­cate, sophis­ti­cated pop vignettes to bru-tally torn, electro-acoustic riff­ing full of angu­lar, col­lid­ing gui­tar work, accom­pa­nied by “free”, yet ultra-precise, one-of-a-kind acoustic drum­ming that evolves organ­i­cally over the course of a track.
This new oval sound is a cel­e­bra­tion of a new level of skill & sen­si­bil­ity in con­tem­po­rary music: hand­crafted polyrhyth­mic phrases, riffs and struc­tures, bristling with tiny res­o­nances & detail — add-ing up to oddly time­less tunes which are effort­lessly tra­vers­ing rhythms, scales and har­monies. But despite the pic­turesque, acces­si­ble “song­writer 2.0” trap­pings, this album is no revi­sion­ist, kitschy “love let­ter to music”, “O” totally is a con­tem­po­rary hi-tech product.

Over the course of many lec­tures, work­shops and pre­sen­ta­tions Popp has shared his cre­ative vision – with top­ics rang­ing from “alter­na­tive work­flows in time-based media” to his very own fla­vor of video game dis­course; advo­cat­ing a per­spec­tive on media pro­duc­tiv­ity that sim­ply does not cease to chal-lenge conventions.