Romantiq

Romantiq is Oval's first studio album since Ovidono (2021).^[2] The album is based on an audio-visual collaborative project between Oval's Markus Popp and digital artist Robert Seidel for the opening of the German Romantic Museum in Frankfurt.^[2] The album draws inspiration from Romantic concepts and works.^[5] It incorporates flutes, pianos, trombones, and other period instruments, with digital manipulations.^[6] An opera singer's voice is sampled on the opening song, "Zauberwort".^[6] The album's cover art is a still image from video work by Seidel.^[7]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	80/100[4]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[8]
Mojo	[9]
Pitchfork	7.4/10[7]
Spectrum Culture	65%[10]

According to the review aggregator Metacritic, Romantiq received "generally favorable reviews" based on a weighted average score of 80 out of 100 from 5 critic scores.^[4]

Paul Simpson of AllMusic stated, "Far removed from the exuberant maximalism of 2016's Popp and 2020's Scis, the album sounds closer to the electro-acoustic experiments of his sprawling 2010 comeback O, except this one feels like a more focused work instead of an unruly hard-drive dump."^[8] He added, "Romantiq's compositions manage to be soothing and reflective even as they restlessly pursue unknown sounds and feelings."^[8] Jeff Terich of Bandcamp Daily called the album "one of Popp's prettiest works, with the lines between its source material and its digital manipulations becoming more blurred than ever."^[5]

Stephen Worthy of Mojo stated, "Chords are distorted and jerked out of shape to create powerful percussive tools, but the pioneering glitch artist's music never tumbles into dissonance."^[9] Marc Weidenbaum of Pitchfork commented that Oval's instrumentation is "the result not merely of sampling, in the cut-and-paste sense, but of the highly precise reworking and simulation of musical instruments: the ability to craft what can seem real but are, at their core, digital implements."^[7]