Oneohtrix Point Never: New Album

[drillkicker]

Well it was obviously organized by Daniel Lopatin, and he even made horrible songs to accompany the story, so I'm guessing he does want people to take it seriously. I think that's an absurd thing to ask of people, though.

I really hope it's all just a joke and it isn't meant to be serious. It still isn't a very good joke, though.

[Aerial Boundaries]

idk, I haven't even seen it. So until then my assumption is mountains out of molehills, sorry bud.

Anyone who uses the term "cliche matrix" in an interview has a sense of humour. So if he has made some ARG which devalues his entire body of work, then I can only assume he's done so as a joke. Or at least half a joke, and a wink and nod.

[Aerial Boundaries]

Drillkicker 1 week ago
I didn't like this at first, but it's slowly growing on me. This may actually turn out to be a really good album.

Browsing the comments on I Bite Through It, when lo and behold! Welcome home

[drillkicker]

After listening to the Oval album everybody mentioned when the track was released, I'm a bit less impressed by it, but those hoovers are still pretty great.

It actually has a bit of a Ben Frost vibe as well, now that I think about it.

[Dandegyrecorder]

Garden of Delete just leaked.

[Aerial Boundaries]

Still deciding what I think of this. Overall... I was blown away on first listen just by how far he's taken it. When he said it would be a sad portrait of pop music he wasn't kidding. There are some tracks I love on first listen but I'm still speechless with a lot of it. I think regardless of what I end up thinking of this, it immediately shows the kind of tremendous bravery and integrity this guy has. He will never tone his ideas down, or scrap them in favour of something more friendly to his fans.

That's why I love Lopatin, he is such an exciting artist. Wakes me up out of my musical stupor sometimes.

[sevenELIXIR]

don't care for it at all. sounds like part 2 of r plus 7. like someone changing radio stations.

[Aerial Boundaries]

Fair enough. I think it's fantastic so far, but I also consider R Plus his best album so there you go.

[The Telepathic Kid]

I don't hear R+7 here at all.

G.o.D is much more song focused, and it feels like Lopatin is trying to create flowing and progressing compositions. There is a stronger emphasis on melody than on R+7.
R+7 has tracks which feel like a series of short moments spliced together (Americans, Still Life, Inside World) which allowed for a strong sense of dynamics but not coherence within each track.
Despite tracks like Ezra and Mutual Standard having a lot of phases, these phases feel connected to each other and a progression from the previous. It's less jarring, more flowing, and it seems apparent that Lopatin was trying to write actual songs instead of creating a series of interesting aural oddities.

I feel that G.o.D also has the strongest melodic base of any OPN project since the early releases. Tracks like Animals and No Good have gotta be the most purely melodic tracks he's composed since his 2000's work. Not saying that the interstitial records weren't melodic, but it felt like that melodies weren't their main focus, they were more experiments in sound and sampling. I feel G.o.D. is Lopatin going back and saying "OK, I've made these experiments, I need to show the world I can still compose real melodies."
And I feel he does.

[Aerial Boundaries]

Hm I feel much more of a similarity to R Plus than you do TTK. Definitely not in the way sevenElixir is suggesting though. Perhaps I have this feeling moreso because the production is very similar (starting with midi as the basic structure and building up, with quite a lot of what he terms "horizontal density"), not necessarily because of shared concepts.

I will +1 that for the melody, this is a very melodic album.

Also it's nice to see him using his old synths (Juno 60?), and his voice again.

The absence of Drillkicker is not going unnoticed by me, I wonder what he thinks? (nudge nudge)

Finally, I wonder to what extent Lopatin made this as an ironic reflection on pop music as he so claims. I detect too much playfulness for him not to have enjoyed creating 'pop' melodic turns of phrases, textures, and auto-tuned voices. I reckon it's a bit of both, I am by no means suggesting he was kidding himself with that statement. We can see where it applies when for instance, a track is cut in half by a squeaky "what is wrong with the world, why is everyone so miserable?"

[The Telepathic Kid]

I'm just talking from a sound and compositional stand point, it's a completely different album.
y'know, what music is usually based off of. >_>

Like I feel this is more visceral and explosive, whereas R+7 was exploratory and searching. It feels like Lopatin went into G.o.D. knowing what he wanted to do, while R+7 feels like he made a record almost purely by chance, making experiments out of songs. I think in some way the new one is the opposite, refining experiments into a song format with structure and rigour.

G.o.D. feels more purposeful, with more punch and bite (no pun intended).

But we've talked before, we almost have completely different ways of approaching music.

[Aerial Boundaries]

I'm not so sure R Plus was almost entirely by chance. There's certainly an aleatorical element to it in the way he chose his samples, but the basic structure as with G.o.D was laid down on panio roll from the get go. In that sense I see them as very similar indeed, his approach to production is the same, simply abstracting from midi as a solid base. The fact that R Plus sounds exploratory is definitely more down to the concepts in that album, what with the references to oulipo and this constant feeling of the more bizarre/esoteric side of modernist art. But even then, though the choices for the samples were random, they seem to have been picked from a very small conceptual set as far as I can tell and I think I remember him saying as much.

You are totally right that this one feels more purposeful and self-assured. I would say this is less of the opposite and more a combination of both worlds, his back catalog and R Plus.

On the other hand I do feel a sense of exploration here with all these heavy metal, pop and acoustic sounds, as well as the constant change of tempo and mood. Which I think of as an extension of his 'nothing is really, concretely cliché' philosophy from the R Plus era. I Bite Through It is the perfect example of all this and he's used the juxtaposition between these different sounds in a really hypnotic way. This album will still sound fresh many years on I predict.

>_>

Not sure what that was supposed to indicate. Was that directed at me?

And yeah we do seem to view music differently, but it also seems we have similar tastes so far (I'm under the impression yours is more wide than mine though).

[The Telepathic Kid]

">_>" is one of those silly text based emoticons.

It's meant to be like, I'm saying a statement which was a little smart alec-y and I'm looking off to the side or something. I dunno.
It's part of the ooooold internet and seems to have faded into obscurity over the past 5-10 years as the internet has become more ingrained in our culture.

You mention that you hedge a lot on what Lopatin has said in interviews or in press releases, and we've talked about this before but again, I feel that whatever the artist does is only marginally related to the music itself. It's extra contextual information which should not be necessary for enjoying the music, and when I listen to music I just base my judgement on what I hear.

But essentially what I was saying is that this sounds more composed than R+7. It may have come from the same process but it sounds the way it sounds to me.
I'm talking about tracks off of R+7 like Still Life, or the ones where an initial idea would be established, and then it would be seemingly abandoned in favour of a new experiment which only felt tangentially related. Like Zebra after the exciting first third, or the middle section of Americans.
Don't get me wrong, I like what Lopatin does and they're interesting experiments, but I feel the tracks on G.o.D. have more structure, which is something you may even be agreeing with me on.

[valleaux]

">_>" is one of those silly text based emoticons.

It's meant to be like, I'm saying a statement which was a little smart alec-y and I'm looking off to the side or something. I dunno.
It's part of the ooooold internet and seems to have faded into obscurity over the past 5-10 years as the internet has become more ingrained in our culture.

Emoticons are part of the "old" internet? Oh my, I'm old.

[Aerial Boundaries]

Oh I know what it means, I was just wondering if you were using it in an abnormal sense as I feel it was uncalled for. The implication being that your way of listening is common sense or something, which isn't the case. And in any case, you say that your judgement is based off composition and the way it sounds, but I would say the same about my approach, the content just differs, which brings me on to my next point:

I take a lot of context from interviews precisely because it changes my perception of the music. It's not simply 'oh I see how he did that', it's actually capable of fundamentally changing how I view a track, what emotions I feel etc, because the artist's intentions give me certain clues that I can follow. The more I understand what the artist had in mind, the more I feel a dialog going on and that's what I love in this kind of music, an in-joke here, a whispered philosophy there. It is an active listening process and it comes with it's downsides in terms of being unable to simply relax and take it in, so I'm not saying it's categorically a better way. And I don't do it with all music, but with this kind of nuanced work the temptation is too great.

Yeah we don't disagree completely, I don't doubt God is it's own work quite apart from R+.

[b0qurant]

That's why I love Lopatin, he is such an exciting artist. Wakes me up out of my musical stupor sometimes.

Agree with this so hard.

Bumping this thread because I bought this album yesterday from Bleep and I'm shocked it isn't garnering more discussion.

I've only had about three full listenthroughs so far in about 20 hours or so, but I'm kind of shitting myself over it.

This album is relentless.

Reminds me of Empty-the-Bones-of-You era Clark + early BoC + Syro + radio-friendly dubstep (in a tolerable and inspired way).

And for what it's worth, the climax in Mutant Standard (about 60% of the way through the song ... when those pounding synths syncopate and then meet one another) literally makes me feel dizzy, kind of high, and physically ill.
It's one of the most inspired parts I've heard in a long time.

Need some more time with it but I'm kind of in shock.
This is an incredibly daring album.

[FortonServices]

It's pretty bonkers. I love the whole presentation of it. I think I've enjoyed this more than the few other albums of his I've heard. I can imagine this being very influential a few years down the line.

[Techboy]

just read an interview with this chap in the guardian. he called this a pop album.
so i went and listened to it.

i really don't get it.
is this as accessible as it gets?
i mean i will concede that it is daring. it does challenge my expectations. it is bonkers. and like all things, people are entitled to call it art.

but the problem is... it's mince. just really bad. well, for me, that is.

is there anything more accessible or is there some "point" that i'm missing?

[The Telepathic Kid]

what about it don't you like?

I find it to be accessible in that the melodies are rather catchy and the song structures are less fragmented than his previous work.

[b0qurant]

I'm a person of small but powerful obsessions w/r/t listening to music.
Like, I'll listen to an album nonstop for half a day, shedding some tears over it here and there, nuts about it, and then the next morning I won't be that interested ... but then the next morning I'll go back to that original "nonstop listening for half a day" album ... yadda yadda yadda.
Listening to music is kind of bipolar for me, and it hasn't always been that way.
Back when I first started really getting into listening to music and writing my own a little while ago, I was able to focus more extensively (timewise and interest-wise) on albums.

For whatever reason, G.o.D. is the first album in recent memory that has been consistently, powerfully keeping me interested and even transfixed. Very good feeling.