Listeners of Oval, aka Markus Popp, will be familiar with his form of electronic experimentation that is generally conveyed as “clicks and cuts’ for ease of translation. Voa definitely steps beyond this area with a more assured form incorporating South American folk, complete with guitars and drums slowly breaking apart in the electronics and being thrown around the place. The 18 track album incorporates the talents of Agustin Albrieu, Aliace, Hana Kobayashi, Mate Gadea and Andres Gauldron. Most of the recordings are from the Salvador da Bahia sessions in north-east Brazil and there is some added Oval originals. An album that preceded this release in February 2013 called Calidostópia! contains further examples of this form of future folk music. Voa is quite extraordinary, self-assured experimentation that both distils sounds and plays with the instrumentation in a restrained yet present manner. It overlays an atmosphere of glitch ambiance and amps up the instruments into an almost metallic warmth while pushing the vocals forward and allowing them front of stage without relaxing the experimentation. It is this sort of album that some would call “mature’ and others describe as “next level’ – you choose, or perhaps add your own synonym. There is quite a lot of space in some tracks that allows individual sounds to play out their potential. Most are short tracks between one and two and a half minutes but the brevity disguises a compacted sound experience. Voa is Oval at his best, combining earlier experimental techniques, letting the resonant sounds play out into a warmth and the possibilities wander assuredly off.
Innerversitysound
