Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica

“Lopatin has accomplished something many musicians making so-called experimental music fail to do: open our ears to
new sonic possibilities and, more importantly, force us to reconsider and rewire some of our most basic assumptions.”
(Wire, January 2010/311)

Oneohtrix Point Never is Daniel Lopatin, a US native whose work has brought him to the forefront of the modern
electronic composition scene. Though Lopatin’s rise felt meteoric following his 2009 double-disc anthology Rifts and its
2010 follow-up Returnal, (praised by the likes of Wire, Pitchfork, Fader, Guardian UK, The Quietus, and XLR8R) his love
of polyphonic synthesizers dates back to childhood jam sessions with his father’s Roland Juno-60, an instrument which,
like B.B. King’s Lucille, he has never left behind.

Audiences in the last year have gravitated towards OPN’s profound arrangements, which manage to touch upon both
mainstream and discarded electronic music histories, and merge the structural freedom of noise with the abstract
emotionality of work considered by many to be “background music.” His passion to find personal meaning in failed new
age utopias and liminal science fiction environments often brings his compositions to the brinks of minimalism, drone,
proto-techno, noise and pop, clarifying the past through a blissful repetition of its signifiers. If one can communicate
efficiently within the realm of electronic music, OPN reveals itself as a project with a zeal for expression, an emotive
blinking light on the cold horizon.

Replica, his latest effort, is an electronic song cycle based around audio procured from television advertisement
compilations. These sample-based meditations are as lyrical as they are ecological, featuring re-purposed “ghost vocals”
which serve as narration for Lopatin’s signature amorphous, ambient passages. Lopatin’s commitment to his Juno-
60 is still on display, but the placid, synthetic surroundings of Returnal are accelerated via darker, propulsive terrains
using samplers, analog filtering, tape manipulation, acoustic piano, plate reverb and sub-frequencies. In his own
words, “Replica has as much to do with environmental, broadcasted, and club sounds that I was exposed to while on
the road over the past couple years as it does with more direct musical influences.” The result is a heightened sense of

Presales

music as part and parcel of an overall sonic landscape.

Another note of interest is the record cover itself; a 1936 illustration by Virgil Finlay depicting a vampire looking in
the mirror and only seeing a skull. The backside of the record features manipulated ASCII art of a skull credited
anonymously on the web. This duality lends itself to the record’s conceptual themes: replication, violence, androgyny
and preservation.

Replica was mastered by Joe Lambert (Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors, Dan Deacon) and mixed by childhood friend
Al Carlson at Mexican Summer’s studio, marking this as Lopatin’s first proper studio project.

TRACKLISTING:

1. Andro
2. Power Of Persuasion
3. Sleep Dealer
4. Remember
5. Replica
6. Nassau
7. Submersible
8. Up
9. Child Soldier
10. Explain

So, what do you think? Best reviewer each month gets £10 off their next order!