*2026 stock* Oval's album Popp started as a concept album. It was neither meant as a pop record nor as "the Markus Popp signature album". At first, Popp was all about playing around. And about changing the musical outlook from the earlier hyper-detailed, improvisational Oval style to straight-up sequencing, old-school glitch tricks and beat-making. Popp explains, "Working on these new 'club tracks' was like going from cucina povera (my 1990s student-budget glitch style) and hi-tech fusion cuisine (post-2010) to feeling like a vegan who just stumbled into a barbecue seminar."

Popp is a relentless, euphoric love letter to a musical utopia: kaleidoscopic and soulful, optimistic and grandiose. No matter if you choose to trace the many exhilarating, meandering melodies ("RE", "ID"), or if you prefer to dance to the housy information overload of "AI" and "LO", Popp is simply a joy to listen to. The newly introduced, intricate "fantasy vocals" are another new through line in Oval's music: weaving a blissful, sensual, "post-R&B"-narrative beyond words ("KU", "LO", "VE"). Ghosts of vintage Oval glitch stylings ("FU", "MY", "MO") are met with swooning strings, dreamy bells, 1990s rave stabs, angular bass lines and polyrhythmic beats. The atmosphere can even border on the solemn ("SA"), cinematic ("CA") or even hymn-like ("VE") before dissolving into these unstoppable, multi-layered loop-scapes. Popp explains further, "However complex and insanely technical my tracks may ever be getting, I will always make sure they sound organic, as if they're running on nothing but sheer imagination."

Markus Popp's early, now legendary album releases sent shockwaves through the "electronica" landscape in the late 1990's - introducing a unique, innovative digital sound and production aesthetic. With an undeniable instinct for the pleasantly irritating, the drastic and the dreamy, Popp pioneered "glitch" and "clicks & cuts", inspiring and provoking an entire generation of musicians to this day. After a long hiatus, Oval returned in 2010, changing the game all over again with a new, groundbreaking "hyperreal" style, blurring the lines between the electronic auteur and (virtual) "band music". The distinctive, organic appeal of Oval tracks, remixes and albums have brought along several watershed moments for the entire genre.