O

When Markus Popp of Oval reappeared, after close to a decade, with the 70-track O double-album, there was something wild about the whole affair, as though the software curator of yore had severed threads with his past. And it’s true that the music here is, in many ways, quite different – there’s less going on; it’s more focused; there are programmed drums, and clicking, chiming riffs that sound as though they’re plucked from a guitar strung with tagliatelle and spun glass. And sure, the ringtone-brevity of the fifty cuts on the second disc gesture towards shifts in consumer practices, but they’re also unrelentingly lovely – a panoramic view of Popp’s melodic gift, but now in plain sight. At the time of release, of course, it felt overwhelming – something like 100 tracks, many barely flickering to a minute, spread across O‘s two discs, and its satellite Oh! and Ringtones EPs – but in retrospect many, including myself, got it wrong. Listening back, this wave of new material doesn’t come across as a data dump, or as a critique of glut and digital media. It’s the enthusiastic expression of a new voice emerging from an established order.