Oneohtrix Point Never
“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. Although Lopatin’s rise seemed meteoric following the praise for his double disc anthology “Rifts” (coveted by the likes of Wire, Pitchfork, Fader, Guardian UK, The Quietus, and XLR8R), it is the result of a love affair with polyphonic synthesizers dating back to childhood jam sessions with his father’s Juno 60; an instrument which, like B.B. King’s Lucille, he has never left behind. Audiences in the last year have gravitated to OPN’s profound arrangements, which manage to touch upon both mainstream and discarded electronic music histories; merging the structural freedom of noise with the abstract emotionality of work considered by many to be ‘background music’; in fact his passion to find personal meaning in failed new age utopias and liminal science fiction environments often brings his compositions to the refracted brinks of minimalism, drone, proto-techno, noise and pop; clarifying the past through a blissful repetition of its’ sonic signifiers. The sound of OPN is history filtered through modern process with an emphasis on structure and a humanness that resounds in its melodies; 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.
"Rifts" and "Returnal" were coveted as the #2 records of 2009 and 2010 by Wire Magazine. Lopatin was named Bleep's "Artist of the Year" in 2010.
Lopatin's rendition of Returnal with Antony Hegarty earned Best New Music honors from Pitchfork Media.
Lopatin has released music on the iconic NYC-based noise label No Fun Productions, as well as legendary Viennese avant-electronic label Editions Mego. At La Geode in Paris, Lopatin shared the stage with 1970s krautrock legend Manuel Go?ttsching. He has also played alongside acts such as Fennesz, Wolf Eyes, Panda Bear, Thurston Moore, Hair Police, Excepter, Lustmord, Okkyung Lee, Carlos Giffoni and Keith Fullerton Whitman.
Lopatin's first multi-channel sound installation will premier as part of Anne Hilde Neset's Sonic Tank exhibit at Tou Scene in Norway, which also includes work by Kim Gordon, Charlemagne Palestine, Stephen O'Malley, Oren Ambarchi and Ellen Fullman. He has collaborated on multimedia projects with artists such as Nate Boyce and Justin Craun, and has remixed artists on labels such as Warp & Domino.
Latest album Replica is an electronic song cycle based around audio procured from TV ad 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 Juno-60 is still prominent, but Returnal’s placid, synthetic surroundings are accelerated through darker, more unpredictable terrains via Lopatin’s use of samplers, analog filtering, tape-op, piano, plate reverb and sub-bass. The result is a heightened sense of music as part and parcel of an overall sonic terrain.
