oneohtrix point never

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new album is great, the layered oldtime synth drones of 'rifts' filtered w/ classic mego distortion

sreynolds interview

Can't wait to see this guy at On Land in a month, having heard enough about him.

awesome stuff

How do you pronounce this band's name?

however you like, imo

one-oh-trix i'd wager

I like what I've heard.

one-oh-trix is right, bit of a pun on a radio station tag iirc from reading an interview. i love this fella's sound. he wrings so much melancholy out of his equipment: 'zones without people', 'russian mind' and 'behind the bank' to name but three. 'where does time go' from his new one ploughs the same furrow but i could listen to this stuff all day.

i'm not done with rifts yet

thanks for linking that interview. i was initially repulsed by the sound-excess of returnal but it's become my most frequently played album lately. looking forward to hearing rifts. cool to see Mego releasing more broadly-appealing artists like this (and Emeralds)

both returnal and rifts are incredible, have been obsessing over them for the majority of this year. i know this sounds lame but BUY THE VINYL. it really does help bring certain textures into focus more so than i remember on the mp3s

xps yeah 106.7 i gather

love rifts...got returnal on order

good mix by him: http://www.factmag.com/2010/06/28/fact-mix-162-oneohtrix-point-never/

still haven't heard his music, but just saw this feature which piqued my interest:
http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1226

tbh i don't understand why he's getting so much hype, but then soundscape stuff doesn't really do it for me. i keep waiting for the beat to drop.

ambient by way of rhythmic overload and interweave = not as many beats? i like the bc-ness of tracks like "computer vision" -- kind of bumping without a drum part ...

good show, too -- both times ive seen him it was heavy but not too long. at the release party for returnal it was a nice blend of that record's noise and rifts-style washed-out sci fi sheen.

rifts is outstanding. love the super cascading stuff like "ships without meaning". haven't given the new one enough time yet.

games is pretty dire, though. was intrigued by descriptions of "midifunk"

love going through sunsetcorp's favorite vids on youtube. lots of demonstration vids from the 80s for computer graphics and synths and stuff.

Thanks for the tip, hobbes. Loving these videos.

"russian mind" is the bomb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySeXihaEqZY

i like that one, not so shapeless

The only track I heard was on a recent Uncut giveaway and it was delicious.
I'm by no means anywhere near au fait with this scene, but when it hits - decent Tim Hecker, Fennesz - anybody else? It's ace.

stars of the lid? eluvium?

Dig Eluvium and SOTL too

think basinski falls into this category

emeralds
some of james ferraro's stuff

Vangelis

wolfgang bock

Ray Lynch

m bison

jk

y'all should really check out Music For Lazy People by Waki (on Traum) for more arpeggiated bliss.

wayy more chilled out then opo, though

I dig his lindsay lohan tribute shit..

And the mix he recently had posted on Fact magazine's website.

big fan of this dude. has another mix here: http://www.self-titledmag.com/home/2010/05/20/needle-exchange-020-an-exclusive-mix-by-oneohtrix-point-never/

That mix set me off on a major harold faltermeyer youtube binge.

FACT mix is so awesome

That Faltermeyer track is really nice. That mix and the Fact mix are so good.

He's playing the Decibel Festival here in September.

what do yall think of antony's version of returnal?

"russian mind" is the bomb

video is by bay area's nate boyce!

I think Antony's version is quite pretty.

it's the boards of canada vibes (subtle pitch bends, spacious tonal wafts) that keep me returning to returnal and rifts

"pelham island road" recalls pete standing alone, with the repeated melodic figure early on in the track.

The Antony/Fennesz version is really nice . . .

yep fennesz remix of antony's cover of "returnals" is killing me right now. i'm not really an antony fan but this is so good

RAINBRO MIX http://pitchfork.com/forkcast/14801-funseeker-oneohtrix-point-nevers-rainbro-mix/

Played a v. good set at On Land. Rocking his Boston Celtics cap the whole time.

wow oneohtrix remixing vladislav delay! the sistol album is nice, more awkward and psychedelic than anything he's done lately

the remix is good but i wouldn't have recognised the source track

dude's turning into somewhat of a maven, running olde english spelling bee, the new project 'games'. makes me want to buy a juno for real

finding this kind of maddening tbh

he's kind of a total wanker these days?

did you press the button with the triangle on it, or the button with the square on it?

he's kind of a total wanker these days?

Stylistically? I mean this album is right in his wheelhouse, so I guess he's been a bit of a wanker since day 1.

Loving this btw - finally got to play this through and it's easily his best since Garden of Delete for me. This is really good stuff and has sonic elements of a lot of his recent work, but structured in a way that reminds me a lot of R+7 and GoD, which is probably my favorite era of his. Love the percussive elements on this too - lots of acoustic drums and sounds, which feels like a new element along with the strings.

Memories of Music is like him doing a Campfire Headphase turn or something. I love it!

Do not care for this new one tbh. Kinda boring.

i fucking love this record, especially right around “nightmare paint” and “memories of music”

I love Again. Obviously there's a lot going on to fully process after a few listens, but every few minutes it throws out something that hits me right in the feels.

I also basically love everything he's done. It feels like there's a critical consensus building that he's gone off the boil? I think Age Of was an off-ramp for a lot of people, whereas for me it was the moment he went from being an artist I really like to an artist I adore.

hadnt kept up with his stuff for a while but liking this one

Age Of was a huge disappointment after Garden of Delete, and to this day is the only OPN album I haven't bought. Babylon is just truly, truly awful; the only song I really liked was Black Snow.

It's a head scratcher to me, because Love in the Age of Lexapro from later that year is sublime; the title track is among his greatest works imo.

I think Magic OPN got pretty good reviews, and Lopatin is still very much in demand as a producer, so I'm not sure if there really is a critical drop-off? One dud album so far is a pretty good run imo.

Magic was awful, I love Age Of and “Babylon” is a banger

yea I like Magic so it's really only Age Of I don't connect with. dunno if I find it bad just really unmemorable

those two albums maybe gave off the impression that he was leaning more into his weird pop instincts which I think throws a lot of what was so interesting about him by the wayside. also I really don't like hearing him sing.

still some interesting stuff there, just glad his sound is ever evolving

...“Babylon” is a banger

I agree w/ this but only the remake with Alex G.

I don't really see OPN as a 'banger' artist, aside from maybe Sticky Drama.

Babylon is so far from a banger. The melody is syrupy, the vocals are awful and the production is a hot mess. I think it's the only OPN song I actively dislike.

Magic was quite literally a snooze

Haven’t been that disappointed in a record in years

I don't hate Magic, but definitely prefer both the new one and Age Of. Never really warmed up to GoD. I agree with the folks who are hearing echoes of R+7 on Again. He seems to be favoring samples over synths more on this new one than anything he's done since R+7.

also just ftr, The Ghost Club, i’m using banger in the sense of “great song,” the way my zoomer students do

I was rewatching The Viewing, the Panos Cosmatos-directed episode from Guillermo del Toro’s anthology series, and realized Lopatin did the music for it

Thanks for the clarification table. I do not understand a lot of Zoomer culture, mainly because I can't get past the fashion. And TikToks are way too frenetic for me to keep up with.

Surprised Magic is getting so much, uh, indifference? I thought the songs were much stronger than Age Of and the synths sounded fantastic.

The new one is slightly weaker from a trad songwriting perspective, but definitely a lot more adventurous when it comes to sound design and offbeat structures. Can def see the R+7 connection, particularly in those synth organ arpeggios on A Barely Lit Path. The AI snippets are a blast.

I understand TikToks but I don’t participate at all— mostly absorb them through Instagram accounts tbh

Zoomer fashion just seems like any generational thing of remixing older styles and trends, but I get how the particular eras that Zoomers are mining can feel a little dopey

Fun fact: these are the promo videos he selected for an overnight music program here on the weekend. (I eventually had to go to bed, but presumably the 50-odd selections up to Weyes Bloods were his.) He was legitimately quite entertaining outlining the merits of Edie Brickell or whatever lol.

https://www.abc.net.au/rage/playlist/saturday-night-7-october-2023-on-abc-tv-/102944674

i fucking love this record, especially right around “nightmare paint” and “memories of music”

otm, this is the stretch where I went from, "I kinda like this one" to, "I really love this album"

Surprised Magic is getting so much, uh, indifference? I thought the songs were much stronger than Age Of and the synths sounded fantastic.

I was pretty enthusiastic about it at first too but the more I relisten the more I realize that most of the stuff I like about it is in the first half. after that I think there are a lot of real ugly stretches, feels like inventing music in your head while you're trying to sleep but it's mostly just obnoxious

still like it better than Age Of which I still barely remember a thing about

I mean yeah, that's a fair criticism.

You're lucky you can barely remember Age Of. The worst parts are permanently etched in my brain. I think I had such high hopes after GoD that I kept relistening, trying not to believe OPN could have got this bad.

Anyway I've spent a lot of time with the new one now and I think it nears his post-Replica creative peaks. Not as engaging or fully formed as R+7 or GoD but that's kinda the point. It's a real grab bag of '90s alt rock, prog, AI uncanniness, and modern classical all smooshed together in inimitable OPN style. Which is either really great or really grating, depending on your mood.

I have a lot of respect for artists like him who try to do something different every time out. but with a guy like him whose work is so conceptual at times I feel like it's inevitable that sometimes he just can't capture what's in his head.

giving the new one a try now. so far I can say the shit he pulls on the title track is pretty cruel for anyone who bought the vinyl :)

oh yeah this is really good. I was a little worried that the good reviews were maybe a function of people not liking the last two much but this one hits a lot of the right buttons. maybe because it's so proggy. also the sounds are so much crisper than they were on the last two - a lot of it has the same lush detuned touch as R + 7. I read a comment somewhere that if R + 7 is like its own little mysterious structure, this is the world that structure is housed in. I can get that because I think this is the 'biggest' album he's done by some amount.

also agree with bamboohouses in how every few minutes there's something really special. there are a lot of very cool moments and hard left turns that I think go beyond what I'd ever expect to hear on an OPN album - like the ending of "On an Axis". and a lot of it is anchored by that familiar Juno sound too. was kinda worried that the length might be a bit much but I think the album gets stronger as it goes. idk I can get why people might think it's boring but I'm fascinated by it

It kinda sounds whatever if you just let it play in the background, need to pay attention to appreciate it.

this is alright but feels like it's stitched together from glimpses of better albums? both his best since r+7 and proof that he's long been out of ideas. someone should hire him to make a game soundtrack, he'd be good at that

proof that he's long been out of ideas

I don't know what other than a lot of ideas would compel a person to create a piece of art like this. Each song sounds like it has hundreds of unique samples and modulated and micro-managed like crazy. I wish I had an eighth of his ideas.

right I mean you could argue this album is an amalgam of everything he's done in some way but I hear plenty of new things in this as well. as lukas said though I do think it's an album you really have to focus on to get a lot out of, and if you're not, it's just kind of odd background noise. I get that criticism, but I'm telling you there is a lot here, more than in anything else i've heard him do really

I caught him live last night, quite a show! The set spanned his full catalog and even included a couple epic Rifts jams. All the songs seemed to be very thoroughly worked over vs the original recordings, which added a lot. He really showed off his range, lots of different moods and styles, some synth-heavy pieces, some more sample based, a couple beat-focused songs that almost went into straight up techno. His performance made it very clear that his mastery of composition is in a league apart from a lot of other electronic musicians, just non-stop daring use of alien sounds coming together in a very thoughtful and always surprising manner. The highlight of the night was a version of "Sleep Dealer" that interpolated material from Again, with weird melty Soviet animation flowing behind him. One surprise was that he did zero singing. I don't really mind because his vocal tunes are not really my favorite, but it seems like that's been a big focus for him on recent albums. My only sort of complaint is that it was intensely loud, especially the bass frequencies that rattled my ear drums and made me feel almost sea sick at times. I've been to this venue several times, and the massive sound system is always a bit overpowering, but OPN went well beyond that.

Did he play any eccojams?

nope, I'm pretty sure it was only stuff released as OPN

whoa I love “sleep dealer” that sounds so cool! that’s great that he played some rifts jams too!

Was the new sunsetcotp discussed : mentioned on Ilx?

The MoM video?

Right

Can't shake the suspicion that the long opening suite is a live jam with overdubs, regardless coming around to this being top-tier opn.

A lot of his earlier stuff was recorded live then edited down and he's been returning to thst material lately, so it would make sense.

still awed by the version of physical memory i saw him play a few months ago - a live album of that Rebuilds performance would be welcome - i don't know if part of the appeal was knowing and loving the rifts material and then hearing it in these mega-steroidal cybernetic monster-robot versions - but it was a wonderful (and sonically exquisite) experience

It really sounded huge! It's such a difference that I find it hard to connect the originals to the live versions.

so many beautiful moments on 'Again', and it does seem to keep on improving until the end. it's difficult to single out favorite tracks because there are so many fantastic details and instances during the transitions between them. favorites are "Krumville", "On an Axis", "Ubiquity Road", and "A Barely Lit Path". i learned that Jim O'Rourke's contribution is featured on the title track, so i listened closer this time and noticed some pleasing things (atonal fragments, pops/clicks, and the sort of cracking, glitchy elements that are secondary to the wildly stuttering, granular vocal & instrumental samples) - smaller details that i hadn't picked up on before. "On an Axis" sort of sold me on the album, and "Ubiquity Road" is lovely.

i received the CD in the mail today, and despite having already listened to the album upwards of 20 times, i've found that it's best when listening closely (not just having it on in the background) ... the constant and fluid mutation, nuanced mix/production, and its cohesion make it so compelling to listen to. and, decent tunes with sticky melodies. it's delightful, possibly my favorite album that he's done. i'm a fan of Age of, Returnal, and Again. haven't heard the Magic OPN album, however. i'd always felt lukewarm (maybe ambivalent) about R Plus Seven. Garden of Delete is impressive, but it's a grating listen. i'd reach for it regularly, during 2015, hoping to click with it, but it always succeeded in letting me down.

Was lovely on a long rainy drive the other day. Parts of it sounded kind of like a late 80s Joni Mitchell album.

I think this is my favorite album from this year. An incredible amount of depth to this album, I keep hearing new things on every listen.

Listening for the third time today, I think that it might just be that the charm has worn off or something— it's beautiful and has a lot of depth, but it's also really boring. I'm completely unexcited by it.

yeah it doesn’t have the YouTube hall of mirrors purgatory of replica, the Stygian sheen of r+7, the deep web prodromal terror of GoD—there’s no emotional core.

observationally it seems he fell off once he started collaborating and trying to have “beats” and “vox” in his music.

From most to least (but I'm still making a declarative statement!) confident:

(1) incredibly well crafted

(2) some wonderful moments

(3) a sense of "falling" through the whole album

(4) an actual tho ineffable there there

(3) a sense of "falling" through the whole album

*nods sagely* yoga nidra