Markus Popp , the man behind Oval, is credited with creating the style we now know as “glitch” or “clicks & cuts”, but he never stopped there. Scis is his latest offering, an album still pushing technology, using the computer as an instrument, but for the first time it seems you can most clearly hear the musician behind the screen. It’s emotive, there’s loops of acoustic instruments, composed together in ways that feel more organic, and improvised. Popp describes extensive research into “new vintage”, and this album reflects that and his history. It employs familiar sounds or motifs in new ways, and unfamiliar sounds in old ways and this combo gives it something present. There’s prepared pianos, woodwinds, sweeping strings, gritty bass riffs arranged, among other styles, using Oval’s signature loop-driven techniques. Moments remind of traditional electronic and re-imaginations of a club sound aesthetic, and there’s moments that feel cinematic and lyrical and the album as a whole feels in between and both. With his early works he championed software intuition over his own role in music making, anticipating the AI trend in composition while most of us were still mastering Microsoft word
