Just for a moment, forget everything you know about Markus Popp. As Oval, Popp was a ubiquitous presence during a Powerbook revolution that injected "mistakes" and DSP processing into electronic music's perfect frameworks. Regarded as a forefather of the movement, his own conceptual output, while widely respected, met with mixed responses; some listeners had a hard time wrapping their heads around what seemed like utilitarian exercise steeped in academic, software-centric exploration. It didn't help Popp's bookish image when he championed his own Oval Process Software, an algorithmic engine that let others create their own Oval tunes with a few mouse clicks, and which led to the question, who (or what, exactly) gets credit for making this music?

Seems like we got Mr. Popp all wrong. His latest album, a joint venture with Japanese songwriter/producer Eriko Toyoda, is a deliciously musical project enjoyable on many levels. So begins with Eriko's home-recorded material (songs on which she sang, played guitar and later processed), and recontextualizes it through a unique post-production spectrum -- a virtual tug of war between the two headstrong artists. The material was wrought of "fierce" conflicts and clashing ideas (as Popp puts it) in the assembly stage, although you'd never know it from the album's gorgeous, harmonious freeflow, haunting with fragmented design work as much as thick, soul-stirring atmospheres and surprising pop elements. So unearths Popp's definitive interest in making Music (which he stresses in the interview with a capital "M"), and, while it is arguably his best album yet, it would be unfair to let his top billing overshadow Eriko, a serious producer whose contributions threaten to outweigh those of her glitch hero collaborator. Whatever happens to So (the two will be working on a follow up), we haven't heard the last of Eriko Toyoda.

The following is our chat with Mr. Popp, which reveals a bit of awe in his recent creation and clears up some of the most common misconceptions about Oval, followed by a brief and somewhat less coherent conversation with Eriko Toyoda.

Splendid: What sparked this collaboration between you and Eriko?

Markus Popp: We met in Tokyo and Eriko had recorded all of that material over the course of years at her parents' house. So, what we're talking about now is like a song collection from a few years back. At the time, we were just reworking some of her material. She approached me with this kind of collaboration in mind, and I think it's safe to say that she was looking for someone who could contribute something to the music. She clearly had me in mind to contribute something to the music that she couldn't deliver herself. But, having said that, it's equally clear she could already do this on an amazing level. It's certainly not the case that it's Oval music with a singer, or a collaboration with the Oval guy and a Japanese songwriter. It's more like her compositions with me contributing to that. I worked as a kind of art director for her, for the whole thing.

Splendid: What was the original material like?

Markus Popp: It's pretty similar. Over the course of the collaboration, it went different ways. It took a different path here and there. Certain tracks came about newly recorded, or came out differently.

Splendid: So Eriko had already processed her own music?

Markus Popp: Yes, absolutely. It's not like she's just like a singer/songwriter kind of person, sitting down with an acoustic guitar and then composing a song. She also did all of this processing herself.

Splendid: When she first approached you, did you already have something in the back of your mind -- a direction in which you wanted to go? Or did she have to sell you on the idea?

Markus Popp: That's difficult to say. I don't approach my music in a strategic manner, to say that, "Okay, the next thing I need is a kind of project with a certain kind of element, or targeting a certain audience, or working toward a certain kind of style." It's more like reflecting my own kind of accommodation process with a certain kind of technology, maybe. That's how it was with Oval, at least. Of course, there were always certain deliberate steps and certain direction. Having said that, with the collaboration with Eriko, it's really like a document of a collaboration that was not always working out very harmonically. It's not like in a complete collaborative sense in the best sense of the word; it's collaborative in the sense of conflict (and) conflicting views. It's probably appropriate to say that we are both uncompromising individuals and producers; there were some very fierce arguments. It's really the exact opposite of a file sharing kind of thing, where we sit down with the label on how to format this project or how the promo photos should be taken. It's not going to be like that.

Splendid: Did you collaborate over the internet, or was it more side by side in the studio?

Markus Popp: Shortly after we decided to work on the project, Eriko moved here, to Berlin, because maybe the work atmosphere is not compromised by so many external factors in Japan.

Splendid: It's been said that the album was a "painstaking process".

Markus Popp: You mean detailed, or that it took a long time...?

Splendid: That's what I took it to mean.

Markus Popp: Not exactly. Some of that stuff was already existing. I'm probably very good at working on details, with kind of almost irresponsible timing. Like, really spending so much time on little details that, in the end, get hidden, get buried deep in the mix. The process itself was very easy. The actual collaboration is separated. We both put forth our own styles and the most important and crucial part is that these kind of ideas collide in the middle, and we had to do our best to work it into something.

Splendid: And, as the art director, how did you steer her material?

Markus Popp: It's still collaborative. I'm not really making any decision on my own. I was just more like a consultant. At the moment, the idea was to make the material recognizable in a certain way and not too far-fetched than what was already existing. It could have come out in a completely different way as well, but for now it takes this kind of form. It's kind of a technology demonstration of what it can do, what it could be like. It could come out later in a different way.

Splendid: Were you using any special software?

Markus Popp: No. The closer you approach the essence of this music, which is a very musical essence, the less interesting the software element becomes. Of course, it's always using a certain level of technology. It's completely relying on software in the end. It's not deliberately going back to a certain kind of recording process that would be kind of deliberately analog, or deliberately old school. Of course, it's all Powerbook based. But there's also a way of shifting the attention of the listener to different aspects of the sound, which makes it completely not interesting anymore whether it's done with a Powerbook or if it's done in the studio or if it's processed or if it's a live recording. This all became kind of second or third priority. The most important point was creating this kind of overall musical approach, leaving a musical impression with people. They are listening to music instead of just listening to a certain kind of production technique.

Splendid: That's something that people who know your work will probably be a little surprised by.

Markus Popp: It was always like this. With Oval, it followed a different kind of design guide or a different kind of rhetoric or different kind of conceptual framework. But in the end, declaring Oval this kind of software engine... in the end, it all turned into a software installation represented and installed in a public space. Of course, this was very ironic because the music itself was completely musical. Oval was completely musical. Of course, some people don't understand, or cannot decode the music. They just think it's some guy fooling around with software for its own sake, or that it's all done not only with the computer but just by the computer, by the software. That's all very ironic. In fact, it already holds true for Oval that people should be left with a kind of musical impression, or should be able to read this result as music.

Splendid: It sounds like you have an unfair reputation for being concerned more with "how to get there" than for being concerned with what the results are.

Markus Popp: (laughs) Yeah! I mean, it just depends on what the appropriate statement is for a certain time. In certain times, it's more interesting to have a framework come with your music at a certain time. With Oval, it seemed like it would be inappropriate to mention these quality aspects because at that time we were talking about the electronic music at the peak of the productivity revolution. With every iBook sold, there were like two or three new recording artists, two new labels and one new alter ego of the same guy. That was music that had no criteria at all. The only criteria that was left to define music was that, "Okay, is it like a text file, or an image file, or is it like a sound file?" Now, fortunately, we can talk about other aspects that are musical, that might seem like a contradiction to my claims from a few years ago. But if you listen to an Oval record, it's always music. It's almost ironic that some people took that as a pure software experiment. In one statement, I can say that So music should be possible to just listen to and still make perfect sense in the framework of the contemporary possibilities for producing music. And still, it's not even necessary to mention that this is process, and this is the natural voice, and this is based on a vocal sample and this is based on a synthesizer sound. Because, in the end, if you would even try that, you would get it all wrong.

One more thing I might add is that Oval was always interested in encouraging people. At the time when the Oval Process Software was introduced, I was inviting people, or trying to trigger a discourse -- Okay, come on, why don't you come up with your own criteria? What music should be like, or how music and software are connected. Because, with Oval Process Software, I wanted to give people a means to evaluate what was going on. With all of these people playing these shows where the audience only sees the back of the lid of the Powerbook, there was nothing to see and not so much to listen to. What there was, was just a kind of deconstructing of music instead of building something up, and just proving that music could be processed in any possible way. But it didn't necessarily have to have a musical value. At that point, Oval wanted to invite people to come up with their own criteria, whereas So is more trying to encourage people to stop doing this. To stop.

That would be a good thing. (He laughs.) Not everyone who could start up an iBook should really feel invited to join the output and inflation and the overkill of the product. Everyone can be a listener. Even us. I'm not considering us in a kind of outstanding position. This might seem like a super arrogant claim to say that, "Why don't you guys stop and leave it to us." Of course I don't mean it that way. To turn it back to the listener has certain benefits after all that sheer output. What we've seen in the last few years is just a huge stream of audio -- music itself turned into a huge streaming file. So tries to introduce certain criteria that, at first glance, are relying on very obvious musical structures and elements, but if you come closer, you'll see that things are progressing at their own pace and following their own logic and there are a couple of surprises. In the end, you can finally hear something. That, I think, is one of the achievements of the So CD -- that, after a long time, there is something to listen to again.

Splendid: I see. It sounds like you're saying that, now that this form of music has a little bit history, it changes the landscape and how you look at it.

Markus Popp: You mean, has it changed my mind, personally? Or my opinion? No, that was apparent or even predictable years back. I just completely underestimated the situation that it would happen like that. I wasn't frustrated or anything. (He laughs.) I'm just always following my own criteria, somehow. The real challenge was to collaborate with someone like Eriko, who was at least as strong minded about her music as I was about my own stuff.

We had an interview here in Germany and a guy asked, "Why did you end up working together?" And, spontaneously, we both said, "Because, otherwise, we would just have been enemies." We were listening to each other's stuff and we were just so angry and very uneasy about what was in there. And we were both kind of nervous about certain things. At that point, it would have been very difficult if we had not decided, "Okay, let's turn this into something before we cannot forget that this kind of stuff exists somewhere else in the world, already."

Splendid: Your approaches sound like they kind of provoke each other, in a way.

Markus Popp: Yeah. (pause) Yeah.

Splendid: But it sounds so harmonious.

Markus Popp: Yeah. (He laughs.) It's just the professionalism. We can make it sound any way, but that doesn't mean it's really reflecting... Well, maybe we shouldn't destroy the people's illusion of this type of duo. It can be any way, and it's different every day. Sometimes we are of the same opinion on different points, but other times it's fiercely debated. With the general kind of guideline and the way the record worked out, we are very happy with it because we had full control of what to do and what to save for the next record.

Splendid: So you guys butt heads so fiercely...is that par for the course with collaborations? For example, when you collaborated with Jan from Mouse On Mars...

Markus Popp: Not at all. It was completely different.

Splendid: Do you like it better? The confrontation?

Markus Popp: Ah... yeah. Yeah, because I'm challenged more. I have to question my own approach much more. Of course, I'm not confronting anyone with my views to decide things or control things. It's just to kind of be leaving the safe zone and I have to cross over to another kind of territory. Listening to Eriko's music, it was more like discovering this other kind of territory existed at all. Obviously, there is so much music. I probably don't know very much of it. There's always music somewhere, but it was a certain kind similarity, I felt, that was, at the same time, achieved with completely different means. That, of course, is the most interesting factor about her work, because she doesn't have any limitations apart from not being old enough to have 15 years (of experience) playing guitar. With my music, I always find that I have some limitation to apply certain strategies or elements to the sound, and she can even turn the track around even more, in a more unexpected direction. That's something that was new to me.

Splendid: It sounds like you have a very high regard for her talents.

Markus Popp: Nah... well, yeah! It's true. Of course, but I'm also very ambitious to get her out of this kind of Powerbook producer/Japanese singer kind of thing, because that's very far from how it is. I'm not saying it's the Japanese Powerbook producer and the European assistant kind of thing. It's different. There is really more to this thing than you can see at first. I also changed my role in the thing a couple of times, but so far, I've never really worked in projects that allowed me to change that role, because I was always safe in going my own way. In the end, I was always assured in taking a certain direction. I never had the feeling that I might be shortsighted in certain things, but you have to be aware that I was entering a different territory. The capital-M music kind of world. I didn't want to know much about that before.

What is a song? What can a song be? What is it like if you emulate a song, which only appears like a song but was never a song in the first place. With some of the tracks on the record, which even sound composed with a guitar and singing in mind, the starting point was somewhere else, and in the end it came together as such. In a way, there are even some elements that seem played by certain elements, but the source material is completely different from what you guessed. It's a little bit different for every track, but maybe that's getting too much into the details. It's not so interesting. I think the most interesting thing is what I already said, that it's something you can listen to. How it sounds is important, and what music was all about -- which I didn't want to know much about before -- those are the most important things.

Markus leaves the phone and Eriko Toyoda comes on.

Splendid: Markus was saying that the sound sources for the So album came from archives of your own material, most of which was already processed. How long have you been involved in producing music like this?

Eriko Toyoda: How long? Are you talking about each song, or about how the tracks came? At some point we just decided to stop working for tracks, because it would never end. We could work forever for each track and create any type of sound, because, he could, of course, process from any kind of sound and we can have any kind of sound. Of course, there was a limitation where we could use my voice, or a guitar sound, or a bass sound or maybe some noises out there.

Splendid: Was there a lot of disagreeing in the studio?

Eriko Toyoda: Yeah, but at some point, one of us had to keep quiet, because otherwise we would end up crushing everything. Because both of us, we are living in completely different worlds, maybe. We have defined opinions. Most of the time, we couldn't find any agreement for certain things. For the tracks, we could never sit next to each other and work on one track. We always worked on our own.

Splendid: Can you give me an example of how you two disagreed, musically?

Eriko Toyoda: It's not really like, disagreed. I like his technique, with what comes with Oval, how he put together the sounds that he created. At the same time, I was kind of afraid of losing my own voice. Because his world... I was almost stopping my own work, but then that would mean the end of my own existence. I couldn't stop, but I also couldn't stop loving his music and his taste.

Splendid: Was it a matter of him maybe deconstructing things too much?

Eriko Toyoda: Mmmm... not really.

Splendid: I read that you were still working on the album ten minutes before it was picked up by Fed Ex, before sending it to the label.

Eriko Toyoda: Yeah, yeah. (She laughs) Every day, we said, "Okay, we will send." But, every day, we said, "No, we cannot send." We were working on it till the end.

Splendid: Do you think that you could have kept working on it indefinitely?

Eriko Toyoda: It's always difficult to find the moment where we should finish the track, because I don't think that everything I do is so perfect. I always want to work more and more. And he will agree on this point, and that is one of the reasons why we can't say, "Okay, this is the end."

Splendid: Were you intimidated at all working with Markus Popp?

Eriko Toyoda: No, never. I never thought about it. When I was working, I was only thinking about the music and I just liked to listen to the sound that came from his side every day.

Splendid: You had originally approached him about working on this?

Eriko Toyoda: Yeah, I joined a lecture and had a question for him. It was a big lecture, and there were maybe 300 people. And I'm so small, maybe 150 centimeters. Because I'm so small, (the man with the microphone) didn't see me and somehow the lecture finished. So I had to come to him and talk to him and start the beginning of the conversation.

Splendid: Did you expect him to want to work with you?

Eriko Toyoda: I didn't really think about working with him in the beginning. It was not like the first word I said was, "Let's work together." I just had some questions to ask.