Music
These six projects help tell the story of one of the most exciting producers of experimental electronic music.
At Red Bull Music Festival New York 2018, Daniel Lopatin took his Oneohtrix Point Never project to Manhattan's cavernous Park Avenue Armory to debut MYRIAD, an audiovisual performance structured around songs and collaborators featured on OPN's latest album, the brilliant Age Of. MYRIAD represents the latest milestone in Lopatin's fascinating artistic trajectory, which has seen him emerge as one of North America's most prominent experimental artists over the last decade. Get to know his work before he brings MYRIAD to Canada for the first time at Red Bull Music Festival Montreal on September 26.
Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol.1 (2010)
While Lopatin is most well-known for his work as OPN, it isn't the only name he's adopted over the years. In 2010, he released Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1, a limited-run cassette of warped pop-sampling pieces under the basketball-player-referencing pseudonym Chuck Person. Before Lopatin released a digital remaster of the tape last year, original copies of Eccojams Vol. 1 reportedly fetched prices as high as $400, and the project has been lauded for its influence on the nostalgia-drenched sub-genre of music that The Wire's David Keenan coined “hypnagogic pop.” For those who want more Person, Lopatin has hinted that the since-dormant persona might be revived again someday.
Replica (2011)
Oneohtrix Point Never started gaining the attention of the music press and public through the release of the sprawling 2009 new-age-y collection Rifts and its noisy follow-up Returnal – but Replica, OPN’s fifth full-length from 2011, marked the project’s true artistic breakthrough. In a sense, Replica (which was also the last Oneohtrix Point Never record released before Lopatin signed to venerated British electronic label Warp in 2013) is a distant cousin of the sampledelic approach showcased on Eccojams Vol. 1, with Lopatin utilizing clips of old TV commercials instead of pop songs this time around. Featuring a haunting illustration from late pulp artist Virgil Finlay on its cover, Lopatin described the primary thematic conceit behind the record as “a way we deal with the decline of knowledge, or human knowledge going to waste because we’re not immortal.”
ANOHNI's Hopelessness (2016)
Lopatin has worked with a variety of collaborators over his career, from Ford and kindred spirit Laurel Halo to Iggy Pop and drone artist Tim Hecker. But one of his most striking collaborative works came in the form of Hopelessness, the 2016 LP from ANOHNI that brought Lopatin in the studio with the iconoclastic artist and Glaswegian producer Hudson Mohawke. ANOHNI’s previous work typically focused on balladry and traditional rock-based arrangements, but Hopelessness was something else entirely, as Lopatin and Hudson Mohawke’s aggressive production flourishes added urgency to her passionate, often-political lyricism. The album marked a new and exciting chapter in ANOHNI’s career, and she celebrated by performing in huge spaces like the Park Avenue Armory at Red Bull Music Academy Festival New York 2016 and Barcelona’s massive Sonar Festival.
Touring with Nine Inch Nails and Soundgarden
Oneohtrix Point Never’s 2015 album Garden of Delete blew up the project’s hyper-modernized style to EDM-sized proportion, with thick beats and jagged slices of melody splayed throughout the album like a post-game paintball jacket. Oneohtrix Point Never’s music can often be insular and designed for personal listening – GoD’s predecessor, 2013’s R Plus Seven, was arguably his most pointillistic and challenging project yet – but Garden of Delete sounded as if it were designed to dominate large-scale venue soundsystems. Fittingly, the record came a year after OPN joined alt-rock titans Nine Inch Nails and Soundgarden on their joint tour, after noise-rap troublemakers Death Grips dropped off the bill – just the right environment to inspire the “hypergrunge” aesthetic of Garden of Delete. (The Korn-inspired tour merch was pretty great, too.)
Scoring Good Time (2017)
As abstract as it can sometimes be, Lopatin’s work as Oneohtrix Point Never often also takes on a cinematic quality, making his approach perfect for film scoring. His inaugural scoring gig was for Sofia Coppola’s teenage-thief dramedy The Bling Ring in 2013, and two years later he contributed original music to the Vincent Cassel-starring cult drama Partisan; but it was his score for 2017’s astounding Robert Pattinson-starring Good Time that truly showcased his filmic ear. Lopatin’s score for Josh and Benny Safdie’s harrowing crime drama drew from several past eras of his own work – the new age-isms of Rifts, Garden of Delete’s swarming intensity – to create a sonic world that was immersive and thoroughly engaging while complementing the film it accompanied. (And the film world agreed: Lopatin’s score won the Soundtrack Award at Cannes Film Festival.)
MYRIAD (2018)
Although Lopatin’s collaborative history apart from proper Oneohtrix Point Never records has been well-documented, Age Of marks the most collaborative OPN album to date, with contributions from artists like ANOHNI and James Blake to Prurient’s Dominic Fernow and Kelsey Lu. The latter two, along with a full-band setup and an array of dancers and visual artists, joined Lopatin in staging MYRIAD at its debut performance at the Park Avenue Armory. An aesthetic collision of post-modern net art and the majestic showmanship typically associated with progressive rock, MYRIAD’s lovely and provocative presentation of Age Of cuts – as well as a few choice back catalogue surprises – was a truly special occasion.