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OvalDNA
A compilation of loose ends, stray tracks, compilation cuts from over the decades, OvalDNA is an alternate best-of or playbook for Markus Popp’s ongoing Oval project. Because it confuses chronology, it works well as album-as-listening-experience; there are enough jolts and surprises to keep you engaged, but there are still those dominant threads that Popp’s music coheres around: the ‘glitch’, the overload, rich tonality, stutters and judders, the glint and the glide. But putting the collapsed architectures of ‘90s and early ‘00s material like “Quiro” or “Gegenlesen” alongside more recent productions – the drum-n-string clatter of “Australasia,” for example – jars in the right way; the threads don’t all weave together, not everything resolves, but something compels you to listen, curiously, to find the joins.