In the ‘90s, Popp, Oval’s leader and eventually its sole member, became known for the density of his intellect. He was knowledgeable about various strands of post-structural theory related to ideas about information and communication, and he made the connections between Oval’s work and various branches of cultural studies apparent in interviews. Given the context they were often found in—next to drunken tour stories in music magazines—Popp interviews began to take on a hint of parody. It wasn’t so long since the heyday of Mike Myers doing Dieter on “Sprockets”, and the idea of a dour German taking himself deadly seriously was, if you were of a certain mindset, kind of funny.

Part of the fun of Popp’s interviews was his struggle with terminology. Oval understood that they were being marketed and received in the same way as any other music, but Popp in particular did not want to see his work in that paradigm. That was partly because one of the goals of the project, ironically, was de-mystification. As computers were becoming more powerful, those who mastered them were beginning to be seen as wizards. To take two prominent examples from the time, Richard D. James’ work as the Aphex Twin and Sean Booth and Rob Brown’s work as Autechre were both presented as surpassingly difficult. The listener was never supposed to be able to make sense of was happening behind the curtain, or to be able to apprehend what sort of algorithms were bringing these bizarre sounds into being.

Popp’s approach, even if he wasn’t necessarily great at explaining it, was different. He once said that what Oval did was not “art” or “capital-M music” but rather could best described as “file management”—a term so functional that it can’t help but shatter the persistent myth of creativity. What we are doing, Popp seemed to say, is sitting in front of computers, opening folders, creating files, and arranging them. The work was, at base level, no different from an administrative functionary in a large office tracking inventory with Microsoft Access: You figure out what needs to be done and engage the software and hardware tools at hand in completion of the task. “It’s just a matter of honesty to say I’m not a composer,” he told Sound on Sound in 2002. “I’m just beta-testing software like everybody else is.”