It should come as no surprise that the new album by Oneohtrix Point Never comes with a concept attached. They usually do. When not composing film soundtracks, or producing an eclectic range of other artists – the Weeknd, Anohni, Charli xcx, Soccer Mommy – Daniel Lopatin has released a string of acclaimed works, each with their own overarching idea.
The “hyperreal world music” of 2010’s Returnal was inspired by the fact that people now see more of the world than ever without actually leaving their homes. In 2015, Garden of Delete had an accompanying origin story about an adolescent humanoid alien called Ezra; 2018’s Age Of imagined artificial intelligence attempting to recreate human culture after humans themselves had been rendered extinct. Lopatin also has an all-consuming obsession with nostalgia and forgotten pop cultural artefacts: he’s made albums based around warped loops of 80s pop hits, preset sounds on obsolete synthesisers and recordings of US radio stations changing formats, discarding the musical genres in which they previously specialised in favour of the current vogue.
