Top three: Oval on European electronic artists Americans need to know 

America knows a thing or two about appreciating pizzas, superhero movies, and indie rock, but compared with their European counterparts, when it comes to electronic music, average Yankees are desperately behind the curve. Sónar Chicago, held Sept. 9-11 at the Chicago Cultural Center, may change that just a little. Since 1994, the Barcelona-based Sónar festival has been one of the premier electronic music gatherings in the old world, drawing about 80,000 concertgoers to the three-day festival in June. To get fest-goers warmed up for the European overtones, Markus Popp of Germany’s Oval—playing Sept. 10 in support of his latest album, O—stepped away from the laptop long enough to hip American ears to three of Europe’s recent must-hear electronic albums. You know, cultural exchange and all that crap.

Comfort Fit—Polyshufflez (Germany)
Markus Popp: It spans this huge spectrum of stuff and it’s really well produced. It’s surprisingly mainstream-y, in the acceptable way. Underneath is this total madness going on, but he has these emcees and vocal talent from all over. The tracks with vocals are pretty close to mainstream hip-hop. Technically, it’s an achievement. It brings back the idea of production skills, not in the sense of recording-studio production skills, but almost in the sense of turntabilist recording skills, even though he doesn’t use turntables. It’s just something you can or cannot do so well, like an athlete almost. On that point, I’d say it’s a very athletic record.

A.V. Club: Has the appreciation for production skills waned in the laptop era?

MP: For me, that was kind of an issue. Now, having almost literally switched sides from this totally electronic way, this electronic producer to this totally manual way of doing my own music [on O], maybe that’s why I kind of see this in his record. It’s very nice and it’s competent. He’s a very talented producer, that’s for sure. The spectrum of stuff he’s doing there is amazing.

James Blake—The Bells Sketch EP (Britain)
MP: He’s definitely trying something very unique here in a very relaxed and almost understated way. Everything is this kind of mix of all of these different types of elements thrown in. It’s almost seamlessly integrated into this sound. Things change directions. The viewing angles on the tracks themselves are changing all the time. The perspective within the track keeps changing. It’s all very cool and not trying to reinvent the wheel and be totally crazy and over the top with all these influences. Instead, he has developed his own style of merging everything into this totally unique sound. It has a very wide spectrum, but everything comes across as perfectly natural. That’s what’s impressive about it.

AVC: Do you think it’s hard for artists to get to the point where they’re not being showy but able to be innovative?

MP: It’s very easy to just go about and just do everything at a given point of time and max out the entire arsenal of tools and techniques at your disposal, everything you want to show off to people and shock and awe the competition, so to speak. On the other hand, there’s always this balance you have to keep, sculpting your own trademark sound. For example, for me with my record, of course I was tempted to use a lot more sound sources or a lot more instruments or a lot more processes. In the end, I decided to go for this almost understated analog or electro-acoustic sound. I thought in five years’ time, this would be easier for the listener to look back on that record and say, “Yeah, this is kind of the sound he had at the time.”

Mwëslee—Eurocarne EP (Spain)
MP: I would almost say it’s the antithesis to James Blake. Unlike James Blake, who manages to merge everything so seamlessly into this strange kind of sound which is almost like a futuristic type of sound, Mwëslee is showing all the particular, discrete building blocks of his music. He manages to make them shine through on purpose. Deliberately or not, he manages to make all the elements, may they be stylistic elements or production, certain synths or virtual instruments, he makes them shine through more, and therefore you get a much more varied sound. There’s more you can detect in it. There are more discrete building blocks you can identify. It has this really weird futuristic mix of stuff. It sounds as if there are always elements playing at the same time, and you can really put your finger on how it’s done.