(Software/Universal)

Synth drone merchant adds samples, goes next-level

Daniel Lopatin’s second album as Oneohtrix Point Never, Replica, differs from his arpeggiated, droning early EPs and singles (collected as Rifts) and début Returnal by featuring a vast number of samples, many of them culled from 1980s commercials – but each so thoroughly mangled and chopped as to sound completely otherworldly. In this sense Replica functions as a synthesis between the extremes of his earlier, texture-driven work and the plunderphonics-esque tendencies of Lopatin’s side-project Ford & Lopatin’s damaged 80s pop – but, rather than splitting the difference, it manages to transform both and cast his previous work in new light. Thus Child Soldier opens with what sounds like a cheesy video game sample but soon, via children’s choir samples and long, textured synth drones, turns into an elegiac piece that begs to be read as commentary on the child soldiers of both the first world (video-game players) and the third (children equipped with guns). Nassau similarly deconstructs a beatbox-like loop of breathy sibilance and slowly mutates it into a a satire of new age music. But it’s the title piece that most sticks with me – a slow, simple piano motif, repeated until it becomes freighted with emotion and memory, while a buzz of synth drones crescendo behind it. It sounds like a private universe collapsing in on itself, and it’s proof that Lopatin has pushed beyond easy genre categories and now occupies his own unique position in the field of contemporary experimental music.

****½

CHAD PARKHILL

Be first to comment on this article

Write Comment
Comments are submitted for possible publication on the condition that they may be edited. Poster's IP addresses are logged.
Name:
Comment:
Code:*