about the record

Rhythm has always been more than timekeeping. Instinctive and ritualistic, it is the first communal act, shared before language—the backbone of millennia of singing, dancing, and human expression. It is from this primal understanding that Munich-based percussionist Simon Popp approaches Trio, his new album and first collaboration with fellow percussionists Sebastian Wolfgruber and Flurin Mück.

At its heart, Trio is about collaboration, playfulness, and unification. The three drummers, each with distinct temperaments and styles, fuse into a single expressive instrument—a sonic embodiment of the Japanese philosophy of Kintsugi, where broken ceramics are repaired with golden lacquer. Rather than hiding the cracks, Kintsugi celebrates them; likewise, the imperfections and interactions of the three percussionists become part of the story.

While technically precise, Trio is never rigid or academic. Its sound palette spans continents and traditions, incorporating drumheads, wood blocks, singing bowls, tuned gongs, temple bells, metal pipes, tongue drums, and piezo-amplified electronics. Subtle processing—echo, delay, and saturation—binds the natural and synthetic, the ancient and modern, the individual and collective, like golden threads filling the gaps.

The album is a celebration of timbre, texture, and touch. Across cultures and time, humans have used rhythm to celebrate, mourn, worship, and bond—through clapping, stomping, and striking. Trio captures that spirit: rhythm as a shared memory, an expression of connection, and a testament to the beauty of imperfection. The cracks are not hidden—they are filled with gold.