Published online by TN2 on the 3rd December 2020.
Oneohtrix Point Never, the alias of American musician Daniel Lopatin, has been a well regarded artist in electronic music for many years now. Fans of vaporwave will be familiar with the influential Eccojams vol. 1, released under the moniker Chuck Person, as well as his album Replica, a more polished take on the genre's sample-based style. The majority of his music, however, is much more eclectic genre-wise, although an atmosphere of vaporwave always seems to linger in the background. This album is no exception.
Eccojams vol. 1 is regarded as an important work of proto-vaporwave. Here, Lopatin took 80s hits like Toto’s ‘Africa’ or Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Only over You’, isolated certain moments, slowed them down, looped them, and applied a variety of effects according to the caprice of the moment. What results is a sort of otherworldly, psychedelic soundscape. It’s like being trapped for eternity inside a five-second pop hook. Every aspect of the sound, the reverb on the guitars, the jangly keys, the quavering of the singer’s voice, are all blown up on a massive scale. The result is a strange brew — laughably simple, disarmingly hypnotic, and unnervingly eerie.
Whereas Eccojams could have been made by anyone with a computer, and indeed many people did go on to slow down 80s pop songs in its wake, Replica offers a more refined and sophisticated take on the vaporwave genre. Lopatin carefully layers samples and electronic instruments over each other, creating an album that explores the same atmosphere as vaporwave, but in a more nuanced and varied way.
In recent years, Oneohtrix Point Never has achieved widespread recognition, contributing to the soundtracks of films like Good Time and Uncut Gems. In Good Time, the disjointed beats help communicate the protagonist’s sense of alienation, and provide a melancholic atmosphere to an otherwise meandering plot. In Uncut Gems, the film is basically carried by its soundtrack and sound design, which goes a long way to impart a sense of restlessness and information overload.
If you enjoyed the soundtrack for either of these films, I think you’ll find a lot to explore on Magic Oneohtrix Point Never, Lopatin’s ninth studio album. The cover was designed by Robert Beatty, who also designed the art for Tame Impala's Currents. Here, Lopatin uses the concept of a radio station as a medium in which he can present the extent of his musical range to his newly enlarged audience. His record label, Warp, have said the album “loosely summons the broadcasting logic of radio dayparts, starting in the morning and ending overnight”. The running time is less than an hour, but the sheer variety and sometimes overwhelmingly unfamiliar electronic sounds on this album make it feel a fair bit longer.
The album’s tracks can be divided into two categories. In one group, you have tracks that are readily identifiable as pop songs, even if they are experimental. Some examples of this would be tracks like ‘I Don’t Love Me Anymore’, which sounds like an indie rock anthem heard through a walkie talkie, or ‘Lost But Never Alone’, which sounds like the song from the closing credits of an 80s crime drama. The least abrasive of the category is ‘No Nightmares’, featuring singer-songwriter The Weeknd (who himself appears in Uncut Gems). ‘No Nightmares’ is a strange song. If it is to be called experimental, it is only by virtue of being so sickly sweet in its autotuned melodicism and cheesy lyrics.
The other group of tracks contribute to creating an eclectic electronic soundscape, full of excitingly unusual effects. On ‘Tales from the Trash Stratum’, what sounds like xylophone notes play in a strange pattern. Like magnetic balls, they appear to be attracted towards each other, until they collide and bounce off in opposite directions. On ‘Bow Ecco’, a synth is made to sound as if it were breathing, with each cycle dragging a bundle of tinselly, metallic objects back and forth.
A sequence of tracks all titled “Cross Talk” develop the theme of an all-day radio. These pieces feature snippets of speech like “elevator music… doctor’s office music”, “so now the music we all grew up listening to doesn’t relate to our adult reality and our new dreams”, and “there’s different kind of music in America, but background music is the heart and soul.” With this kind of elaborate frame, the poppier songs take on a surreal quality — who is this autotuned voice singing us a lullaby in this futuristic, electronic world? The clearest example of this juxtaposition is in the song ‘The Whether Channel’. The first half features a simple, slightly melancholic melody played repeatedly over a few disparate effects. Noise emerges, replacing the melody, until it returns, sounding peaceful, like the music on the Wii menu, but somehow conveying a sense of loss. Then, in the final part of the song, it transitions into mumble rap, complete with heavily processed, out of tune vocals.
Vaporwave changed the meaning of 80s hits for an entire generation. The seed of an idea was planted, and now we can listen to the overproduction, the sentimentality, and the bombast of those hits with an ear sensitive to the possibility of reinterpretation. It seems to me that Magic Oneohtrix Point Never accomplishes something similar, in a tentative way, with some of the more recent trends in music. It takes them apart, interrogates each component, and offers them back to us in new contexts.
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