"Daniel Lopatin has just set a new standard for electronic music in the 21st century" - Glowing Raw
In the world of electronic music there is a spectrum. On one side of that world is a place where hook filled dance pop techno lives and thrives....but, the other side of the world, is a strange place filled with even stranger characters who will fill your head with harsh experimental shredding,and glitchy, droning mayhem that will swallow you alive.
Oneohtrix Point Never lives for the most part, in the latter place. OPN is the recording name of Brooklyn based musician/producer Daniel Lopatin. I found out about him from this blog called Glowing Raw. Their unrelenting praise for his music convinced me to check it out. The album 'Rifts' is a compilation of three other albums he released over the last few years, with some odds and ends thrown in. It clocks in at nearly two and a half hours and to be honest, I don't think I have ever listened to it all in one sitting. So let's start with the the first third of the album, previously released as 'Betrayed in The Octagon.' Here is the cover.
Because this music is so dense, and because there is so much of it, I have been listening to it for months and I keep hearing new things, or things I forgot about. Lopatin is a masterful sound craftsman who knows how to construct a sonic world around a listener, if they are patient enough to wait for it. This is how he describes his own process.
"The goal is to make music with the same intensity as Michelangelo's sculptures — like beautiful, seamless figures, carved almost violently out of gigantic blocks of super heavy, solid marble. The process of stripping away towards something elemental or burying something elemental within a vast world of sound is something that I'm into." -Daniel Lopatin (OPN)
Lopatin is standing on the shoulders of giants (Harmonia, Eno etc). The giants who pioneered spacey synth music back in the 60s and 70s and even 80s. His sound is a smooth blend of kosmiche, ambient, drone, but it is also entirely futuristic and electronic. Photo break.
It's a fascinating idea. The world looks to the future and tries to imagine all the possibilities. There is hope for all the things one can't even begin to imagine. An aesthetic is born out of that, and becomes the prevalent view of what the future can and will be. Inevitably, time passes and the future is nothing like what it was expected to be. Standing there in that moment, one gains great perspective. Being able to observe the uninhibited dreams of the people of the past, and how their hopes didn't come to fruition. It's the paradox of lost futures. It seems so clear now. It is always the present, and things will change, but it will never be the future. A seemingly obvious observation, but its a trap that we are all constantly falling into. Turn on the TV at any moment, and you won't have to wait long before you learn that the "future is now" and that "things will never be the same." You are being sold the nostalgia for lost futures. It's this puzzling paradox that Daniel Lopatin understands. He takes it and folds it in on itself countless times and embeds it into his vast soundscapes, until you are lost in space-time. Alright, enough of that. Check out the covers to 'Zones Without People' and 'Russian Mind' (in that order).
I highly encourage you to check out this sound-scape space-epic. After a while you will sink right in, and you'll never be able to find your way out. I may add to this later, but for now, here is the cover to 'Rifts' the compilation, and you'll find the link below, along with some other stuff including a super interesting interview.
Oneohtrix Point Never - Rifts pt. 1
Oneohtrix Point Never - Rifts pt. 1
