Apoptygma Berzerk is finally taking Exit Popularity Contest digital. Stephan Groth’s 2016 instrumental album arrives on download and streaming services on 27 October 2026, ten years after it came out only on CD, cassette and double vinyl.
The reason is simple. The rights have reverted to the band after a decade, and the physical stock has sold out from the band’s warehouse. The album page is already live on Bandcamp through the band’s own Pitch Black Drive Productions label, ahead of the wider release.
Exit Popularity Contest was a sharp left turn for the Norwegian futurepop pioneers. Groth built it from reworked tracks from three instrumental EPs, Stop Feeding The Beast (2014), Videodrome (2015) and Xenogenesis (2016), and swapped the club anthems for analogue sequences and long motorik grooves.
Side-Line wrote in 2016 that the record paid homage to Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis and Klaus Schulze, with krautrock rhythms in the spirit of Neu!, Cluster and La Düsseldorf. It still sounds like a love letter to the Berlin School.
The ten tracks run close to 75 minutes. The Genesis 6 Experiment opens at over nine minutes, and the album closes with the extended version of U.T.E.O.T.W. All songs are by Groth, except Rhein Klang, which he wrote with Emil Nikolaisen. Ole-Espen Kristiansen mixed the album, Kolja Trelle mastered it and Ingo Schmoll compiled it.
Apoptygma Berzerk formed in Sarpsborg in 1989. Albums like Welcome To Earth and Harmonizer helped define the futurepop sound in the early 2000s, so this detour into instrumental electronics is well worth hearing again.
Exit Popularity Contest on Bandcamp – https://pitchblackdrive.bandcamp.com/album/exit-popularity-contest
Apoptygma Berzerk on Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/artist/3OHbToMuJihWhRcqzKjpBd
Apoptygma Berzerk – https://theapboffice.com/
Side-Line – https://www.side-line.com/apoptygma-berzerk-exit-popularity-contest/
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