Oneohtrix Point Never

Thank You, Music (Jesus Birthday Listening)

/ David James / 4 Comments

It will be Christmas in a few hours.  More importantly, it will be my first day off in over a month and I’m getting a head start on savoring the opportunity for a long stretch of music enhanced repose.  I realize many of you will not be reading blogs or spending time online – some of you must have families – but I feel that it’s as good a time as any in the year to express thanks and revel in the great works of sound art that enhance our lives.  Also I’d like to know what you’re spending your equivalent holiday vacation listening to, so reply if you’re interested.

What I’m into this weekend:

1. Rangers – Pan Am Stories

This one is pure six string love, through and through.  The atmosphere is warped tape and spacey reverb and psychedelic compression but the playing is hypnotic Durutti Column inspired tapestries of melodic progression.  Swinging, flowing, building and cresting and never stopping; this feels like tuning in mid-stream to some frequency of guitarist Joe Knight’s brain, no beginning or end.  It sparkles without ever feeling consciously virtuoso, yet remaining far too impolite for wallpaper listening.  Try out mid-album stunner Jane’s Well below.

2. Sepalcure – Sepalcure

The tangentially-dubstep-related duo containing Machinedrum‘s Travis Stewart and some other guy Praveen Sharma burst out of nowhere last year with a couple EPs that balanced any lack of holy shit! novelty with a more than generous dose of holy shit! punch, dynamics, and elastic rhythm and songwriting that made them instant standouts in an exponentially flattening market.  The fact that their debut LP is a blistering collection of tuneful cutting edge productions is as unsurprising as a sunrise but equally satisfying and essential.  Constant streams of ‘aha!’ sampling and percussion flourishes along with skyward bound synth pads and neck-tingling effects keep momentum with the insistent throb of bass that’s always one step ahead of tame; it’s the kind of sound that I can easily become addicted to, listening on every commute for a week.  The fact that it’s nonthreatening is only a detriment to its chances of appearing on Best of 2011 lists (I am working on one, coincidentally) because this is one of the most solid quasi-danceable electronic releases in a long while.

3. Teebs – Collections 01

My love for Teebs is a known quantity.  While his sound is an entire utopian environment unto itself, there is always room for growth and change, even for someone preternaturally adept at crafting beat-bliss pocket symphonies.  Enter his new ‘Collections’ series.  Presented as an odds and ends gathering of sorts, only hinting that it’s less of a mission statement than the debut LP in that the tracks lack consistent segues.  This half hour is more assured and ballsy than anything he’s dropped, loaded with muscular bass and distinct structures.  There’s a tangibility and sense of confidence here which the drifting vistas of Ardour couldn’t sustain over its length, and a wider palette at work.  Collaboration provides a couple standout moments:  Rebekah Raff’s sensual harp showers Verbena Tea with a transcendent light reminiscent of Alice Coltrane, while Brainfeeder newcomer Austin Peralta anchors the sub-bass throb of LSP with twinkling piano loops.  I can listen to this while cooking, cleaning, or paying the rent.  I can enjoy it day and night and often do.  I can share it with everyone with a working set of ears.

4. Oneohtrix Point Never – Replica

So I’m still really into this.  Pornographic flights of radiance, as I said.  Something new each time I listen.  In the car, in my kitchen, in my headphones mostly.  How lucky to hear something so new and so addictive and so profoundly, unpredictably gorgeous.  Expect to hear more about this, from myself and everyone else who values adventurous leaps into the unmapped terrain of where our minds and machines can go when pushed beyond what’s known.

Listen to the whole damn album below if you haven’t, already.

I’m badly in need of rest so this post stops here.  I hope to find time tomorrow for more since this is hardly all I’ve been obsessive about.  Remember, I’d love to hear what you are into this weekend and beyond! 

Oneohtrix Point Never – Replica

/ David James / 7 Comments

Oneontrix Point Never is set to unleash another album to be considered as a ‘true debut’ next month.  One (very productive) year after the epochal Returnal (Best album of 2010), Daniel Lopatin is ready to declare his creative ambition and lay waste to expectations, eardrums and frontal lobes all over again.  Having excised his synth pop demons with a quirky and catchy Ford & Lopatin album and collaborative impulse on the exquisite, under-heard FRKWYS Vol. 7 – starring drone psych dream team Borden, Ferraro, Godin, Halo & Lopatin – he was ready to dive headlong into the depths of his inner muse, dredging up something distinctly next-level with Replica.

 

The range and variety of sounds incorporated here will likely jolt those familiar with his major releases, Returnal and Rifts, as nearly every track strays from the expected drifting keyboard clouds and laser light workouts haunting those works.  Returnal hinted that things were getting stormy inside the OPN environment, most notably on opener Nil Admirari‘s volcanic eruption of beauty and brutality, before the album subsided into an occasionally hairy yet blissed out ride for its duration.  It was made to be lost in, all thought muscled out in service of a meditative nothingness from which I’d emerge thoughtful and cleansed.  But the translation of Latin phrase Nil Admirari, “to be surprised by nothing,” was perhaps more mission statement than anyone guessed, because Replica aims not only for novel horizons but an entirely new mode of conveyance itself.

Instead of the aural equivalent of a hurricane, this album begins with an invitation to slide.  Nearly reprising the sighing contentment of last year’s Ouroboros, opener Andro lays back and lets gravity work magic as we’re led to believe this will be a less demanding journey than last time.  Perfectly mirroring the chaotic intro dissolving into sleepy rivers on Returnal, Lopatin opens a trapdoor with distortion, tribal percussion and shattered vocals; snapping from the reverie, he unveils the dizzying, fractured realm inside.  Sudden, repeating sample blasts of urgent words (“Up!”) and unintelligible phrases snowball into rhythms, gurgling under warm baths of electronic bass, giving way to flights of pornographic radiance.  Delicate piano and wordless oohs-and-ahhs sparkle through as aggressive syllabic papercuts urge the dynamic tranquility, keeping the listener on his toes.  Every moment of repose is punctuated, every hair raising sequence actively hunting the next surprise around a blind corner

Instead of suppressing the violent energy and gorgeous destruction after one controlled burst, Replica seeks peace, balance and eager dance partners in its propensity for noise and serenity.  Transcendence is the natural offspring of this marriage and feels all the more hard-won and treasured.  Instead of dissolving and blurring out the unpleasant realities of the world, Oneohtrix Point Never now finds a way to reconcile the righteous and beatific experience of life with the windows flung wide.  If Returnal is a night spent alone in meditation, Replica is the morning’s journey into the uncharted future, heart and mind open to the mysterious possibilies ahead.

Listen to the title track here:

and watch the weirdly entrancing official video:

[buy this directly from the artist or via boomkat or even amazon. <3 dat white vinyl.]

Skyramps – Days of Thunder

/ David James / 7 Comments

Skyramps is the combined efforts of Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never – loved here recently) and Mark McGuire (Emeralds), spinning electric gold through a tight 33 minute set. If you’re picturing the homespun sci-fi synthesizer burblings of the former soaking in the ethereal guitar ambience of the latter project, you’re on the right path. This is basically mana from heaven for those of us who happen to be fans of both.

Click the artwork to download the album as a zip file.

When I heard about this release, I practically shat myself. 2009 saw the rise of a more user-friendly, nearly pop natured breed of drone music the likes of which had never yet crossed radars. Drone for the masses?  Not quite. But this is, for instance, far more palatable to your radio listener friends than a Final or Scorn, or even latter day Seefeel album. There’s more dynamic movement than the Gas discography and an airy, inviting tone accompanying the head-nodding foundation. Intertwining lush guitar melodies with Lopatin’s signature synth histrionics, the album soars and soothes in all the right places. The first two tracks feel almost like personal intros for the artists, opening with the prominent sounds of one and slowly adding a dose or two of the other until a fine balance arrives at the end. The second half of the album is where the alchemy truly shines with a blend unique to this recording, and is the gut-level satiating reward for those venturing into this eerie place.

The two obviously know their audience and the images these sounds tend to conjure: warm memories of genre films on tattered VHS (or better- Betamax!) tapes, doodling pictures of Spinners and Darkness, and the unshakable knowledge that anything electronic and/or spacey was the definitive way of the future. These four tracks evoke the optimistic pulse of accelerating full-bore into a strange land of colored light and skyscraping wonder. Maybe it’s not utopia but it’s different than here.  More interesting. Lopatin and McGuire also seem to be acutely aware of how this earnestly nostalgic sensibility lends itself to parody and have pre-empted the inevitable jokes with a wonderfully tongue in cheek title:  Days of Thunder. There aren’t many more emphatically day-glo versions of 1980s Western hubris than the eponymous Nascar thriller and another certain flick by director Tony Scott. Thankfully the album’s palette hews closer to brother Ridley‘s then-unparalleled visions of alternate realities.

 

blade-runner

Folks of a certain age, eat this up. You’ll be digging through dusty childhood crates and pre-ordering tickets for that new Tron movie in no time.

[although printed in a limited run of 75 cdr copies, there are a couple available via discogs for reasonable price, and of course, *elsewhere* in digital form]

*And seriously, watch that Tron trailer. It looks quite a bit more than alright!