In what felt like a sequel, of sorts, to the previous year’s Ovalprocess, on Ovalcommers Markus Popp shifted his focus a little, though his ways of working were similar. An artist who thrives through conceptual practice, embracing limitations as spur to innovation, for Ovalcommers Popp set himself simple guidelines: “achieving sounds as if they could be coming from a trombone or other brass instruments.” (He would also describe the album as a “3D musical obstacle course,” which is just about perfect.) What you have here, then, is Markus Popp’s electronic, detourned vision of a brass band album, maybe; it certainly explains the blare and blast of some of the album, which has a sharper, more acrid tenor than previous Oval, and hints more readily at clashing tonalities. Sounds zoom around your head, magnified for a moment and distant the next; data gets squeezed through a metaphoric sieve; everything’s scratchy, strained and tense, but still lush.