Markus Popp / Oval by Sveta Rybkina
Following the announcement of the radiant new Oval album Romantiq, out May 12th, pioneering producer Markus Popp is sharing the opulent new single “Rytmy”. Collapsing shifting notions of “the romantic” across time and space, “Rytmy” explores a space that feels at once familiar and uncanny. Stately piano figures skate atop burbling electronic textures, processed instruments emerging like perfume before evaporating on the breeze. The track’s masterfully sculpted sonics tread a delicate balance between analog nostalgia and digital futurism, juxtaposing disparate instruments and processes to create a breathtaking survey of ephemeral emotion.
Romantiq evolved from an audio-visual collaboration with digital artist Robert Seidel for the grand opening of the German Romantic Museum in Frankfurt – a huge outdoor projection covering the museum building. From the project’s inception both Seidel and Popp sought a more expansive definition of “romantic”, extending outward from the museum’s comprehensive survey of the 19th-century epoch in art. Popp crafted dozens of short vignettes that each sought to evoke a specific mood or emotion in dialogue with Seidel’s dense, intricate digital imagery and animations. From those initial foundations Popp continued to develop his initial sketches into something even more ambitious and diverse in its outlook. Romantiq surveys a staggering amount of source material, looking as much to literature, architecture and artistic traditions as it does music. It foregrounds the emotional drive that has always been present in Oval records, providing a genuine and unabashed interrogation of its subject matter delivered with delectable sophistication.
