Trio Simon Popp

• 1 Hain 03:42
• 2 OiOOiOiiOi 03:21
• 3 High High Low 02:20
• 4 Birkenschlag 03:53
• 5 Awen 02:33
• 6 Wallride 02:07
• 7 Powidl 03:07
• 8 Nonnegative 03:47
• 9 Eggplant 02:51
• 10 Derecho 03:52
• 11 Before All Else 04:18
• Total Runtime 35:51

Info for Trio

Rhythm has always been more than just for timekeeping. It is inherent to us, instinctive and ritualistic. It is the first communal act, shared before language. Rhythm has been the very core of what it means to be human, the backbone of a millennia of singing, dancing, human expression and interconnectedness. It is with this primal understanding that Munich-based percussionist Simon Popp approaches Trio, his new album and the first made in collaboration with two fellow percussionists, Sebastian Wolfgruber and Flurin Mück.

At its heart, Trio is a work about collaboration, playfulness and unification. It is music as a means of coming together, a sonic equivalent to the Japanese philosophy of Kintsugi, in which broken ceramics are repaired with a visible golden lacquer. Rather than hiding the breaks, Kintsugi embraces them, making them part of the story, a form of delicate transformation. Popp and his collaborators take a similar approach: three distinct drummers, three different temperaments, three personal styles. Fused together into a single expressive instrument.

“Often it feels like one big setup played by three people,” says Popp, describing the sessions. “The same way the stone on the album cover is one stone made of three parts.”

Popp’s musical journey to this project was a slow unfolding. Inspired first by his uncle, a drummer, he began playing at age nine. Early experiences included everything from orchestras to percussion ensembles to local bands, forming what he describes as “a versatile, varied” musical upbringing.

Rock and jazz were early influences, but also the works of Steve Reich, whose minimalist approaches opened Popp’s young adult mind to how rhythm and repetition can create beautiful music.

His formal studies in jazz drumming in Munich expanded his vocabulary further and importantly, introduced him to Wolfgruber and Mück. Over the past decade, he’s earned a reputation for restless experimentation, with his projects Fazer, 9ms, Poeji and Polygonia & Simon Popp and through three previous solo records that blend ambient, jazz, electronic and percussive exploration. Yet Trio represents something new, not just a sonic evolution, but a philosophical one.

Popp’s earlier albums were composed and recorded solo, with live performance bringing in added musicians as a necessary adaptation, Trio developed organically through regular sessions and playing together in Popps’ studio . The compositions would start as tiny seeds. A rhythmic phrase, a pattern, a two-sentence idea, and were grown collectively.

“We’d meet regularly, just hang out, play, make jokes,” Popp recalls. “A lot of the music came out of that fun, that connection.”

That spirit infuses the album’s tracks. On “Wallride,” for example, the mobile absorber walls of Popp’s studio were struck with sticks to produce deep thudding tones that drive the track forward. “High High Low” is built around a tiny motif — two highs, one low — that the trio playfully bends, stretches and overlaps. “Birkenschlag” plays with asymmetry, using an 11/8 pulse to dance around the beat rather than sit directly on it. On “OiOOiOiiOi,” a sequence of right and left strokes becomes an obsessive mantra, played together by the three players like a ritual phrase. “Eggplant” layers two distinct grooves beneath a third freer voice, producing a loose, floating tension.

Despite the technical precision and percussive detail, there is nothing rigid or academic in Trio. The album is filled with a global spirit, venerated not only with the traditional beating of drumheads, but wood blocks, singing bowls, tuned gongs, temple bells, metal pipes, tongue drums and piezo-amplified electronic textures.

The use of electronics and processing throughout the record adds a subtle shimmer. Echo, delay and saturation are used not to distance the listener but to deepen the atmosphere. These effects serve as a kind of golden thread, binding the natural and synthetic, the ancient and the modern, the individual and the collective. Like in Kintsugi, what might have remained separate is made whole, its joins not hidden but celebrated.

The album is a celebration of timbre, texture, and touch, its sound palette drawn from across continents and traditions. Human beings at all points of time, across all cultures and continents have used music to celebrate, mourn, worship and bond. Along with our voices, creating rhythm with our bodies. Clapping, stomping, hitting with sticks. This sits at the core of what it means to express our humanity. That is the spirit of Trio. A celebration of rhythm as both a shared human memory and an audible expression of close bonds.

In the end, Trio is not just an album about drums. It is an album about connection. About the joy of collaboration, the beauty of imperfection and the timeless pull of rhythm as a shared human force. The cracks are not hidden. They are filled with gold.

Simon Popp Trio:
Simon Popp, drums, percussion, electronics
Daniel Scheffels, drums, percussion
Flurin Mück, drums, percussion

Recorded by Noël Riedl
Mixed by Simon Popp
Mastered by Martin Ruch
Produced by Martin Brugger and Simon Popp

Simon Popp
Exploration and play are at the core of Simon Popp’s creative process. Trained in jazz drumming and polyrhythm, the Bavarian-born artist draws from a vast array of percussive instruments to build his expansive sound palette. Learning the drums and listening to a wide range of genres from a young age instilled in him a ravenous musical curiosity that resonates throughout his various projects: as a solo artist under his own name or collaborative projects like Fazer, 9ms, Poeji and Polygonia & Simon Popp.

Popp’s debut album Laya, as well as his follow-ups Devi and Blizz make use of rhythms as storytelling mechanisms. Contrasting light and dark, organic and synthetic sounds, his compositions engage in a dance of subtle complexities, enticing the listener into the practice of close listening. Throughout his albums, regionally diverse instruments such as slit drums, balafon or singing bowls take flight, floating freely over earth-bound counter rhythms, conjuring up call and response techniques inherent in polyrhythmic music. Popp's creative approach favours experimentation over perfectionism, leaving space for happy accidents to unlock new melodic possibilities. According to Popp, “it’s much more interesting to try to push the boundaries of an instrument to see what’s possible.” The Line Of Best Fit have praised Popp’s work with “this is music you can get totally lost in, where the lines between organic and electric are blurred so as to be indistinguishable." Alongside acclaim from the likes of Clash, Juno and Ransom Note, Bleep drew comparisons between Popp and experimental heroes of Philip Glass and Steve Reich.

Closely affiliated with Munich-based label Squama, who revolve around the axis of contemporary jazz, minimal and ambient influences, Popp’s extensive output through his work showcase his passion for collaborating across a variety of avant-garde and popular music.

In 2023, Popp received the Advancement Award for Music from the City of Munich. In 2025, he was nominated for the German Jazz Prize.

This album contains no booklet.