Oval is an
electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...
group founded in
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
in 1991 by Markus Popp, Sebastian Oschatz, Frank Metzger and Holger Lindmüller. The group pioneered
glitch
A glitch is a short-lived fault in a system, such as a transient fault that corrects itself, making it difficult to troubleshoot. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, in circuit bending, as well as among ...
music, writing on
CDs to damage them and produce music with the resulting fragments.
The project has been a solo venture by Popp since the departure of other members in 1995.
History
Oval was founded in 1991 by Markus Popp, Sebastian Oschatz, Frank Metzger, and Holger Lindmüller. Disdaining the use of
synthesizers
A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...
, Oval instead deliberately mutilated
CDs by writing on them with felt pens, then processed samples of fragmented sounds to create a very rhythmic electronic style.
[
Holger Lindmüller left about 1993, and Oval became a trio at that time. Oschatz and Metzger left the group in 1995, with Popp continuing under the Oval name. After a series of releases on Thrill Jockey and Form & Function in the late 1990s and early 2000s Oval was on hiatus until 2010, when the EP ''Oh'' was released. The first Oval album in almost a decade, titled ''O'', was released later the same year, on Thrill Jockey. In March 2013, Oval released a sixteen-track album titled ''Calidostópia!'', a project was funded by the ]Goethe Institute
The Goethe-Institut (, GI, en, Goethe Institute) is a non-profit German cultural association operational worldwide with 159 institutes, promoting the study of the German language abroad and encouraging international cultural exchange and ...
and the Cultural Foundation of the State of Bahia
Bahia ( , , ; meaning "bay") is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the Northeast Region of the country. It is the fourth-largest Brazilian state by population (after São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro) and the 5th-largest by ...
. Later that same year he released ''VOA'' (2013), an album that also emerged from the collaboration with singers and musicians from South America.
In 2016, Popp started his own label, UOVOOO. Its first release was French artist Mei's twelve-track album ''Partura'' and the second being Oval's eleven-track album ''Popp''.
Other works
Markus Popp was an integral part of the creation of Gastr Del Sol
Gastr del Sol (derived from a combination of the name of a race horse (Gato del Sol) and David Grubbs' previous band Bastro) was an American, Chicago-based band, consisting for most of their career, of David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke. Between 19 ...
's 1998 album ''Camoufleur
''Camoufleur'' is the fifth and final studio album by American indie rock band Gastr del Sol, released on February 23, 1998 on Drag City.
Critical reception
Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described ''Camoufleur'' as "a subdued, meditativ ...
''. In 2003 his collaboration with Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
ese singer Eriko Toyoda, entitled So, was released on Thrill Jockey
Thrill Jockey is an American independent record label established by former Atlantic Records A&R representative Bettina Richards and based in Chicago.
History
Richards started the label in 1992 with $35,000 of family and personal capital, while ...
. He also composed the soundtrack for a short film Retina.
Frank Metzger released some singles with Mego and the Internet label Falsch, and started a collaboration with Rossano Polidoro and Emiliano Romanelli from "TU M'" in 2003 called Steno. Sebastian Oschatz is an interaction design
Interaction design, often abbreviated as IxD, is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services." Beyond the digital aspect, interaction design is also useful when creating physical (non-digital) produ ...
er with Meso, a German media design collective.
In 2001 Björk
Björk Guðmundsdóttir ( , ; born 21 November 1965), known mononymously as Björk, is an Icelandic singer, songwriter, composer, record producer, and actress. Noted for her distinct three-octave vocal range and eccentric persona, she has de ...
sampled the track "Aero Deck" (from the 1994 album ''Systemisch
Systemisch is a 1994 album by the German glitch group Oval. It was released in 1994 by Mille Plateaux.
Breaking away from the instrumental format of previous work, the album used sound taken from deliberately damaged CDs to combine an experiment ...
'') on her ''Vespertine
''Vespertine'' is the fourth studio album by Icelandic recording artist Björk. It was released on 27 August 2001 in the United Kingdom by One Little Independent Records and in the United States by Elektra Entertainment. Production on the album ...
'' album.
Awards
*2015 QWARTZ Award "Lifetime Achievement Award"
*2013 QWARTZ Award "Best Experimental Music"
*2011 Prix Ars Electronica Honorable Mention
*2001 Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction
Discography
Albums
* ''Wohnton'' (Ata Tak/1993)
* ''Systemisch
Systemisch is a 1994 album by the German glitch group Oval. It was released in 1994 by Mille Plateaux.
Breaking away from the instrumental format of previous work, the album used sound taken from deliberately damaged CDs to combine an experiment ...
'' (Mille Plateaux
''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' (french: link=no, Mille plateaux) is a 1980 book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the second and final volume of their collaborativ ...
/1994)
* ''94 Diskont
''94 Diskont'' (stylised as ''94diskont.'') is the fourth album by German electronic music group Oval. It was released in 1995 via Mille Plateaux in Europe and in 1996 by Thrill Jockey in the United States. It was the final Oval release to featur ...
'' (Mille Plateaux/1995)
* ''Dok'' (Thrill Jockey
Thrill Jockey is an American independent record label established by former Atlantic Records A&R representative Bettina Richards and based in Chicago.
History
Richards started the label in 1992 with $35,000 of family and personal capital, while ...
/1998)
* ''Szenariodisk'' (Thrill Jockey/1999)
* ''Ovalprocess'' (Form and Function/2000)
* ''Pre/Commers'' (Thrill Jockey/2001)
* ''Ovalcommers'' (Form and Function/2001)
* ''Oh'' (Thrill Jockey/2010)
* ''O'' (Thrill Jockey/2010)
* ''OvalDNA'' (Shitkatapult/2011)
* ''Calidostópia!'' (Goethe Institute/2013)
* ''Voa'' (2013)
* ''Popp'' (UOVOOO/2016)
* ''Eksploio'' (UOVOOO/2019)
* ''Scis'' (UOVOOO/2020)
* Ovidono (UOVOOO/2022)
Compilation albums
* ''I Said No Doctors!'' (2017, Dymaxion Groove)
See also
*Electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...
*Acoustic ecology
Acoustic ecology, sometimes called ecoacoustics or soundscape studies, is a discipline studying the relationship, mediated through sound, between human beings and their environment. Acoustic ecology studies started in the late 1960s with R. Murr ...
*Noise Music
Noise music is a genre of music that is characterised by the expressive use of noise within a musical context. This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical ...
* List of noise musicians
*Chip music
Chiptune, also known as chip music or 8-bit music, is a style of synthesizer, synthesized electronic music made using the programmable sound generator (PSG) sound chips or synthesizers in vintage arcade game, arcade machines, computers and vi ...
*Circuit bending
Circuit bending is the creative, chance-based customization of the circuits within electronic devices such as low-voltage, battery-powered guitar effects, children's toys and digital synthesizers to create new musical or visual instruments and ...
* Dark ambient
*Sonic artifact
In sound and music production, sonic artifact, or simply artifact, refers to sonic material that is accidental or unwanted, resulting from the editing or manipulation of a sound.
Types
Because there are always technical restrictions in the way a ...
*No-Fi
Lo-fi (also typeset as lofi or low-fi; short for low fidelity) is a music or production quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections in the context of a recording or performance are present, sometimes as a deliberate choice. The ...
References
External links
Markus Popp Interview
by Marc Weidenbaum, Disquiet, 1997
Markus Popp Interview
by Sam Inglis, Sound on Sound
''Sound on Sound'' is an independently owned monthly music technology magazine published by SOS Publications Group, based in Cambridge, United Kingdom. The magazine includes product tests of electronic musical performance and recording devices, a ...
, 2002
Markus Popp Interview
by David Sullivan, Cyclic Defrost, 2016
Markus Popp
account on Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
Oval
discography at Discogs
Discogs (short for discographies) is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. While the site was originally created with a goal of becoming the la ...
Oval
profile at Bandcamp
Bandcamp is an American online audio distribution platform founded in 2007 by Oddpost co-founder Ethan Diamond and programmers Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt and Neal Tucker, with headquarters in Oakland, California, US. On March 2, 2022, Bandcamp ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oval
German musical groups
German electronic musicians
Musical groups established in 1991
1991 establishments in Germany