Oval is an
electronic music group founded in
Germany in 1991 by Markus Popp, Sebastian Oschatz, Frank Metzger and Holger Lindmüller. The group pioneered
glitch music, writing on
CDs to damage them and produce music with the resulting fragments.
[1] 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, 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.
[1]
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.
[2] 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 and the Cultural Foundation of the
State of Bahia.
[3] 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.