Oval: “It was never anti-music; I was never an anti-musician.” Interview by Dan Rule

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Taking his role as one of the experimental electronic community’s most strident deconstructionists into account, the idea of Oval’s Markus Popp re-emerging as a musician would seem curious, if not utterly perplexing, at a glance.

In a career that has spanned the best part of two decades and several of the glitch movement’s foundational and most celebrated releases – 1993’s Wohnton, 1994’s Systemische and 1995’s classic 94 Diskont, which he made with early Oval collaborators Sebastian Oschatz and Frank Metzger – the Berliner has made a point of eschewing himself from anything even approaching conventional process.

Where Oval’s early records saw the then trio distance themselves from the synthesisers and other electronic instruments to craft an oddly beautiful sound via mutilating compact discs and intricately compiling, processing and collaging their remaining sonic detritus, Popp’s later experiments saw him remove himself from the music altogether.

Indeed, for Popp, the skittering rhythmic intonations, hyper-fragmented melodic shards and dense, static-drenched textures that comprised records such as Ovalprocess (2000) and Ovalcommers (2001) – which were made entirely on a Mac Powerbook using a customised software interface – weren’t music as we knew it, but a means for reassessing the role of the author or composer in contemporary electronic production. In Popp’s world, the traditional position of the composer was all but extraneous to the production of electronic music via software. The composer was now, rather, a pilot whom could navigate a path through a defined set of possibilities and parameters only relevant to the particular software in use. Put simply, unlike the work of a traditional composer, contemporary electronic music compositions could not be achieved without the software. The role of the musician as we knew it was all but null and void.

So it was with much surprise that after nine years in creative hibernation, Popp reappeared with in mid-2010 with two releases – first, the 15-track EP Oh, then the sprawling, 70-track double-disc album O – that seemed to entirely re-imagine his approach again. While both records shared several of the agile, fragmented sonic qualities of their predecessors, there was one particularly marked difference: these were the sounds of instruments – drums, guitars and strings – being played. Indeed, the shimmering suite of tracks that comprise Oh, and O even more so, were the result of Popp the musician, kitted with little more than a cheap, stock PC fitted with standard plugins and sounds.

We spoke to the affable, endlessly talkative Popp about misconception, denial and becoming a musician.

Dan: I’d kind of lost track of you for a few years

Markus: I did too, by the way (laughs).

Dan: What surprised me about this record was that there was this real methodological and conceptual shift, but by the same token, this relative aesthetic continuity. Do you feel that way about the album?

Markus: Yeah, I’d put it in pretty much the exact same way. I knew that the continuities would creep in, ultimately, and that’s why I focused on a different approach and a different premise altogether. I knew that at some point there would be continuities, because in the end music goes through me, so to speak, so I will always be the final instance and responsible for the music in terms of approving certain elements and discarding others. So in the end I was almost sure that there would be continuities regarding certain elements, atmospheres and so on.

Dan: I’d love to hear a little about this new approach, which from what I can understand, is much more about you playing instruments and the computer in a much more directly musical way. What was the trigger point for that departure?

Markus: I guess one way to put it is that I wanted to challenge music on its own turf because, for me, that’s a much better position to be in. Being the “creator” of your own music is a much stronger stance or position to me in compared to being the music “observer” or the music “navigator.” But having said that, you know, the real challenge was to actually make it happen in that way. It’s very easily said “I’m going to be the musician now and I’m going to play my own music, but it’s a totally different story to be actually able to pull it off.

Pretty much all I have done over the quiet years is practice. I was sort of building up a set-up I could tack down, because at the time I was doing these other records, I didn’t even know what a compressor was or what a compressor does, you know? Now I think I do. So that research was what had to happen to make the music happen in that way. Of course, this new record could have still been recorded in mono, like the other old Oval stuff. All that stuff was recorded in mono just because I couldn’t afford stereo. It was not because I was this anti-musician, anti- establishment, anti-music business guy; I just had this ancient sampler and that’s what I was using.

It was sort of the same thing as the $500 PC. It’s not a statement as such; its just a statement that that’s what I can buy and that’s what I can use. I’ve always sort of been a kind of low-tech guy, so there’s always this question these days where it’s like, “What happened to all your high-end Macs?” (laughs). I’ve never used high-end equipment in any way. Recording this double album, I was one month’s rent away from sleeping or living in my car. So it’s not exactly about me being part of some music reducers establishment in Berlin or something (laughs). That’s just how it comes about, just to give you a picture. Of course, there are conscious decisions, and many of them, that go into the musical concerns or musical approach that went into this new record. But the other stuff is just a pure set of constraints I have to work with.

Dan: Sure. Taking this more direct kind of musicianship into account, do you feel that there is a different relationship between you and the music now? Do you get something very different out of making music in this mode?

Markus: (Long sigh) This question has two dimensions, you know. First, there’s the dimension of me connecting to music as in music legacy or listening to music. Then the second dimension is me connection to producing the music, you know. So I’ll start with the latter. Getting more out of working on music or producing music in this manner, as opposed to how I did it before, that’s not so fundamentally different. Its pretty much the same building blocks and, while its a totally different process, the same mindset, I would say. In the end, there’s more continuities in the producing of the music than there is new aspects, which for me is a very comforting and very reassuring thought, because in the end it means I can still rely on being in love with labelling certain recordings and certain fragments of sound and making up my own visual scenario that goes with it. So there’s more continuities, I would say, than new elements.

However, in the other dimension, as in me connecting to musical legacy, there’s a huge difference. Now, its like me playing the music game, which is not so much like a defeat or even a compromise. It’s me playing the music game and being part of this music thing, because in the end I was drawing the big red line, but music is part of my life everyday – it motivates me, it’s part of me, listening to it is really important – so why not be part of it in that sense?

The old Oval records were also part of musical legacy so to speak. They were products on the shelf and could be considered a proper CD and a proper piece of music just like any other piece of music. But I had this huge reluctance to be actually using the language of music because I didn’t consider myself to be in a position to do so. I’m a very systematic person and I want to consider myself authorised to do something rather than just play around with something. So it just took this much time until I considered myself to be in a position to be using a musical language.

Dan: Do you think there was an element of denial in your earlier practice, in that sense? On the one level, you were disengaging yourself from musical language, but you were still kind of part of it whether you liked it or not.

Markus: Yeah, of course. This is exactly that systemic element, you know. I was totally aware at the time that even disrupting the process or the methods or approach would eventually, ultimately only optimise the system. So there was no outside of the system. After all, the old Oval CDs were proper retail products on the store shelves, which are probably long gone today. It was never anti-music; I was never an anti-musician. There was just this certain reluctance – I wouldn’t call it denial, even though I know that “denial” has been used as a quote before – but I would say that denial was at work in the sense of me being aware of music being such a huge part of my life. But on the other hand I didn’t, myself, feel authorised or prepared enough to be part of it. So I had to take a different route and a different path and do Oval in the way I did it with the old records.

That was my only legitimate way to do music at the time because I couldn’t play music in the way I can play it today. It took me that long to be able to play it the way I play it today. Of course, I could have released something in the meantime, some intermediate beta version of something or a prototype of something, but I just didn’t feel that it was good enough. And I don’t even know if I consider it good enough now. I was listening to the record yesterday and I was like, “yeah” (laughs). It’s fine if I can get away with it (more laughter). Put it this way, if I can get away with this, then a lot of exciting stuff is possible.

Dan: I think you’re getting away with it.

Markus: Cool!

Dan: I’m especially taken by the second disc. While they’re very short, fragmentary tracks in the one sense, its very enveloping as a grouping of tracks. It works more like an atmosphere.

I’m glad that it works for you! I mean, some reviewers, they approach this in terms of a kind of value proposition per track or something. They always claim that the tracks are so short, but overall, you’re getting value for so money because there are so many (laughs). Some people are almost angry that they’re too short.

In a really odd way, it reminds me of Madlib’s approach to making mixtapes and his various Beatkonducta series, where all his tracks are about 40 or 50 seconds up until 1:20. People often describe him as having a short attention span, but I’ve always felt like he’s bringing all these moments together to create a much more expansive, holistic mood or dynamic.

Who would claim that, say, piano pieces by Ligeti would be in themselves a bad value proposition because they are only two minutes each or something? It always depends on the framework you see music happening in and if it makes sense to you to have that hip-hop reference in mind then I’m glad because I didn’t get so far. I would be just as happy with people gratifying these tracks on the second CD as ringtones because that was kind of a concept I worked with while doing these tracks, just to make them really concise and to-the-point and to have a document – a CD – that in the end is like a sketchbook. That was kind of the purpose of the CD too because I just simply didn’t see the necessity to make them longer or to add variations in order to make them longer or to loop them around at the end, because emotional essence and the emotional impact is absolutely there already in the short version and it would just be watered down by just extending the track artificially.

I would rather put it the other way around. I think there are a lot of people out there who maybe should ask themselves whether looping a track around at the end or cutting and pasting parts to extend the track artificially is such a great strategy in 2010, you know. In my opinion, everything is there with these short tracks, you know. The essence is at its purest and very concentrated and across the spectrum of all the tracks you get a huge range of atmosphere and harmony and tempo and rhythm – of course, within a limited range – but that was purposeful. No one would say that a collection of piano pieces is limited because there’s not enough of a sonic spectrum.

For me, this is kind album, almost like a thing I’m most happy I intended to do and of a starting point. The double CD is like a debut relaunch of the entire thing, and for me the about with the album is, a) I could pull off what challenge music on its own turf, and b) I kept everything as pure as I wanted. Of course, on CD one there’s tracks that use electronic sounds and sounds from synthesisers and things like that, but I wanted to keep them to an absolute minimum. So for a debut album, I think it’s just the right kind of design. I think it’s the right kind of essentialist kind of design.

From where did you derive the sounds sources on this record?

I mean, the most important unit or category in starting out trying to do what I did with the record was a riff, as opposed to a loop. You can argue that a riff and a loop can be pretty much identical or have many things in common, but for me the most important difference is that you are able to define a riff all by yourself, as opposed to navigating through a loop that you have extracted from some arbitrary other person’s CD. For me, that made all the difference. The riff was like this totally new world, because I was fully in control – which I didn’t even want to be for the old Oval stuff, I was fine with being an observer or navigator and just organising the sound – but here I was the composer, I was the author.

That said, it was a very subjective choice in a way. I like riffs, I like to listen to riffs. I don’t really listen to electronic music myself, so I’m not into quantised stuff and I was never a kind of sequence guy. So once the riff thing was established, the rest was actually just sitting down and recording the perfect take. Just like I could have spent an entire day with the old Oval recordings trying to extract this one loop that would actually work or actually be good enough, here it was sitting down and practicing until I got it right.

Dan: Yeah, I’d love to hear about that process of “becoming a musician” if you will.

Markus: Well, there were so many more parameters to take into account, first of all, to be able to actually play this stuff. That goes for the guitar parts and the string parts and the drum parts, which are kind of worlds unto themselves. It’s not only to be able to play the drums and pull it off and be able to understand how drums work, but of course, it’s much more important to realise what’s your personal approach, what’s your signature, what’s your contribution to the legacy of drums in music.

Dan: Playing isn’t the objective, but the way in which you’re playing.

Markus: Yeah, so I didn’t want to use any drum machines; I don’t like electronic drums sounds very much, which is really just a personal thing. I didn’t want it loop-based, because that’s just like a compromise. So I had to take the detour and sit down and listen to lots and lots of music and to understand, first of all, how drums work and what they do in music and then, in the next step, figure out what my contribution could be without ending up as an amateur drummer or a super-drummer, over-the-top kind of bullshit guy (laughs).

The real importance, as I see it, comes after deciding to use instruments or play stuff physically. The crucial question is: “What is it that I am going to play? How exactly am I going to play?” Some of the reviews seem to stop at the mere fact that I am now playing this stuff, be it on an instrument or be it through an interface – real instruments, virtual instruments, whatever – they kind of got that aspect but they didn’t seem to ask: “What is he actually playing there?” That’s what makes all the difference. Your favourite musician, provided you have one, how he or she plays is what makes all the difference. It isn’t the fact that he or she is playing a certain instrument. Listening to your favourite guitar band as opposed to the high school dropout band is what makes all the difference. It’s this certain something and certain way of playing that makes your favourite band your favourite band.

Dan: Of course.

Markus: It’s on this certain something that I have spent the most time working. Getting the tech aspect down, but then to actually do something you want to do as a musician, that’s kind of the hardest part. People are like, “Oh wow, he’s playing instruments now.” But it should be “What is he playing with them?”

But maybe we’re getting into proper “Music Journalism” here, so maybe that’s something that not everybody wants to be identified with, and I wouldn’t read it (laughs). But I would say, all in all, I’m happy with how things went. I could pull it off and I’m content and if I do a good job in preparing the live shows, then a 2010 live Oval gig would be one that as a listener I would actually go and see, whereas I as a listener might not have gone and saw a laptop show. In the end, if the main premise is to show that Oval is about music, I would say that I kind of got that across.

O is out via Thrill Jockey/Fuse

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