Daniel Lopatin’s work as Oneohtrix Point Never is some of the most distinguished in avant garde electronic music: it orbits around pop, ensnared by its inescapable pull but with enough distance to negotiate it. From the imitations of industry songwriters built into his 2015 album Garden of Delete to the baroque pop and surrealist radio of follow-ups Age Of and Magic Oneohtrix Point Never, Lopatin’s solo records all entwine pop with its own disintegration. Pop stars are equally captivated – the Weeknd had him co-executive producing alongside Max Martin for Dawn FM last year.
Mainstream v esoteric is just one of several dualisms at play: his excavations of archival sound are also a dig into his own history, and his looks back are often repurposed into speculative glances ahead. On new album Again, he taps into his teen years and introduces post-rock, prog and orchestral works to the melting pot. The sincerity and climax-driven dynamism of these styles are placed in dialogue with real instrumentation from guests such as Lee Ranaldo, plus the whims of AI technologies and his own subversive sound generation.
At its best, the record delivers runs such as World Outside, Krumville and Locrian Midwest, a sequence where chamber choral music dissolves into a shimmering pop breakdown sung by Lopatin himself, preceding an emo joint with Xiu Xiu and Midi instrumentation reminiscent of the artist’s early 2010s approach. Here, AI is poignantly used to mutate vocals and interpret composition, as opposed to the track Memories of Music, where it seems to be given freer rein to write – the result is slapstick played extremely straight. Despite such misfires, Again features some of Lopatin’s most touching music, where the disastrous and the sublime are always second-guessing each other.
