Oneohtrix Point Never - Magic Oneohtrix Point Never

[Kennylogg Bubblebath]

25 minutes ago, springymajig said:

Also, it BLOWS MY MIND that you all have a problem with the weeknd track (as far as I'm concerned, totally innocuous, poppy new age track, can't distinguish it stylistically from any of the other vocal tracks, in fact I can't even tell which vocals are by the weeknd and which are by lopatin himself) but almost no one has a problem with that god awful Nolanberollin section 

long road home is the perfect pop song, and i don't love me anymore is fun and almost mbv-esque.

but no nightmares sounds like an enrique deep cut. and i don't fuck with enrique tbh

[springymajig]

17 minutes ago, Silent Member said:

Nolanberollin is done pretty quickly, weekend keeps wailing for 3/4 of the track

 

Ah... Fair enough. But what do you think of the other vocal tracks in comparison? Also I'm starting to warm to the Nolanberollin bit a little. 

[Silent Member]

They're fine, there's something about that the weeknd track that's just too damn schmaltzy for my tastes, it's got nothing to do with who's doing the singing, got nothing against him.

Edited October 30, 2020 by Silent Member

[springymajig]

I think I can appreciate where you're coming from, I'd be interested to get more detailed comments from others too.

I personally find it hard to pin down any music as being objectively BAD or GOOD (I'm a trained animator, so I have a much sharper eye for film and animation than I do an ear for music). So I genuinely struggle to understand some of what the WATMM hive-mind considers to be unequivocally "good" or "bad".

[fumi]

32 minutes ago, springymajig said:

I think I can appreciate where you're coming from, I'd be interested to get more detailed comments from others too.

I personally find it hard to pin down any music as being objectively BAD or GOOD (I'm a trained animator, so I have a much sharper eye for film and animation than I do an ear for music). So I genuinely struggle to understand some of what the WATMM hive-mind considers to be unequivocally "good" or "bad".

It's a good question. What I find more worrying is that (for me) my like/dislike changed very quickly indeed. Three or for days ago, I was ready to write the whole thing off as a disaster. Today, I've been listening to it non-stop.

[oldenjon]

12 hours ago, Kennylogg Bubblebath said:

yo, this album is fucking good!

second half is very replica/r+7/uncut gems ost for those who were worried.

i still can't get into that one weeknd tune though, and i don't think i ever will, but it's cool cos everything else is rad.

Agreed, and surprised you're the only person that brought up Replica as tracks like Answering Machine, Imago, and Wave Idea fit very much in that universe. I would add that some stuff even sounds like fully fleshed out Eccojams (Eccosongs). Anyways, defeinitely liking it but not in ways I expected to. Needs more listens

Edited October 31, 2020 by oldenjon

[BelacquaShuah]

just absolutely stunned by this album, i feel like a little kid with a new toy. i'm really curious about the dichotomy in the track sequencing. i wonder if there's another scheme here, not unlike Neu! . . . i've noticed certain sounds on one side of the album also on the other side. like that hammer dulcimer sound halfway thru Whether Channel, that appears in Tales From the Trash Stratum, i think, in that gorgeous chord resolving the first section. apparently the vocals, the "bass," and the "guitar" in the song I Don't Love Me Anymore are all in different keys? saw someone complaining about that lol

[Stock]

Second half of the album is a nice surprise indeed. Will listen to the whole thing with that in mind, I'm sure it will change the way I initially enjoyed these tracks.

Been listening to the album on my way to work through an empty quarantined city and fog setting in... It added some apocalyptic feel to the whole experience for sure

[d-a-m-o]

I got to admit that after a few listens I'm warming up to it. "I don"t love me anymore" is a vicious ear worm. My main problem is the amount of featuring , I find them pretty useless, I couldn't  even recognize Arca's voice on first listen. The Nolanberollin part is just awfull. Regarding the weeknd I really can't stand him, represent everything that is wrong with RnB in the 2010's IMHO...

[thumbass]

Definetely more experimental than I though it was going to be wich is great. Definetely the most enjoyable OPN album since R+7 for me

[Bubba69]

No nightmares is like the scene in david lynch movies where the lady sings for a long time and it's boring and you just have to get through it and get on with the film but you accept it because it's david lynch

[Kennylogg Bubblebath]

13 minutes ago, Bubba69 said:

No nightmares is like the scene in david lynch movies where the lady sings for a long time and it's boring and you just have to get through it and get on with the film but you accept it because it's david lynch

drive time suite = twin peaks season 1
mid day suite = first half of season 2
no nightmares = second half of season 2 
the rest = season 3

gottalite?

[Spamlet]

Definitely gonna take some getting used to this one. The second half is lovely, feels like it would sit better if the centerpiece the transition from pop to experimental hinges on wasn't, y'know, trash

[fumi]

I think this is by far away his best since R +7, (IMO). I like all the vocal pieces now especially 'No Nightmares'. It sounds like late 80s' Genesis, I can easily see Phil Collins singing this - it even has the Tony Banks style keyboards.

Also the last forty seconds of the final track is just one of those OPN moments that you wish would never end. Those lovely rising / falling synth washes at the end - like some magical ident echoing in memory.

[Spamlet]

As a structural conceit I guess it makes sense for the most cloying pop song to mark the transition into abstraction. It's just that Auto & Allo and Long Road Home kind of push it to the limit right away, IMO - there's no buildup. The repetitious twin-peaks-ass crooner of No Nightmares doesn't seem to mark a measured climax, more like a deep overindulgence. Everything after that is golden but has to earn its goodwill back. The structure here is sound in theory but in execution really uncalibrated

In My Opinion

[jellied cope]

On 10/30/2020 at 1:07 PM, Kennylogg Bubblebath said:

long road home is the perfect pop song, and i don't love me anymore is fun and almost mbv-esque.

but no nightmares sounds like an enrique deep cut. and i don't fuck with enrique tbh

enrique??

[kuniklo]

I don't mind the weekend track. It reminds me of that Ford & Lopatin album.

I like every track on this album but it hasn't really cohered into an album in my head yet. It sounds more like a collection of interesting tracks. Maybe the disjointedness is the point?

[joshuatxuk]

I forgot to post this earlier>>>

Here's my track by track impressions. Should have gone to bed but I just had to listen to this now:

"Cross Talk I" - nothing new in terms of concept, reminds me of a litany of similar plunderphonics tuning intros like the hidden one from UNKLE's Psyence Fiction He made it nice and succinct and it's carefully edited and mixed.

"Auto & Allo" - nice build up and transition from the tone set by "Cross Talk," have some R+7 flashbacks toward the end.

"Long Road Home" - The percussion, tempo, and vocoder + almost baroque sounding synth lines and strings harkens the better tracks from Jackson and His Computerband's unfortunately lukewarm received and disappointing comeback album Glow. Really well made and produced, dynamic structure as usual but nothing mind blowing for me.

"Cross Talk II" - vocal effects / meddling reminds me of the intro to Com Truise's "Brokendate" but with far more insightful words. Ends with some sample likely from 70s era piano music from a library music record or station bump or god knows what vaguely familiar but hopelessly unknown incidental music.

"I Don't Love Me Anymore" - man I am fucking obsessed with this song, something about this really resonates. Unless I'm completely forgetting past work I haven't heard anything quite like this from him. Haunting decaying synths in the background sound like something from a long lost Memory Tapes. There's an emotional angst to the vocals that reminds me of Elite Gymnastics / Default Genders. Overall hard to pin down blender of styles and genres, prime hauntological pop. Favorite track so far.

"Bow Ecco" - beautiful and fleshed out interlude track, the palette of sounds are the kind I could easily listen to a whole release of.

"The Whether Channel" - another nod to the cultural minutia of vaporwave? TDiggin the shift of mellow bubbly ambient to stretched out blissful drone then back again, made me realize how much stuff like paulstretch is used for music making. Heavy sunset corp vibes at 3:25 in the edited glitched out loops. Then a very Dean Blunt sounding beat and vocal delivery at the end that fades out into some choir and radio AM fuzz. Interesting suite.

"No Nightmares" - OHHH WHATCHA SAYYYY - another nice not super heavy-hand transition from the last song. Getting HUWD era M83 vibes on this in terms of mixing and structure at the beginning. Hate to say this but I'd probably like the instrumental of this as much if not slightly more though the Weeknds vocals fit in nicely but too nicely. Like pleasant but needless topping, would have been curious if they considered running them through effects.

"Cross Talk" - muzak / easy listening / dr office music / background music / library music ~ the media we so frequently absorbed and passively connected with emotionally but never acknowledged. That's what I feel so much of his eccojams and peers work in vaporwave / chillwave / plunderphonics tapped into. Like remembering things everyone else forgot and discarded. Hell, the music he heard via Magic 106.7 so long ago might still be carrying off somewhere in space.

"Tales From The Trash Stratum" - very stirring and interesting track, def a dive back into his more experimental tendencies. This one referenced a YT playlist he had on his sunset corp channel.

"Answering Machine" - Beatles' #9 but sourced from you mom's old voicemail tapes? I dunno.

"Imago" - Plunderphonics and sampling of a more Replica era vibe. Digging the tape hiss on this one. Getting Dalhous and 1991 vibes on this with the decaying tape. Goddamn that music that comes in at the end is haunting. Another standout track.

"Cross Talk IV / Radio Lonelys" - def more of a Negativeland / Wobbly / Cassetteboy culture jamming and mash-up oriented plunderphonics interlude.

"Lost But Never Alone" - similar bent as GoD era work, starts off great but more innocuous lo-fi electronic pop (reminded me a bit of Orchid Mantis) but shifts to a darker tone more it the vein of Tobacco or a litany of post-witch house and goth/coldwave revial music of the last decade. The grunge synthtar-esque solo at the end was a nice surprise.

"Shifting" beginning makes me want to watch 90s era Sci-Fi channel and play mortal combat. This is the Arca one isn't it? Weird haunting but comforting vibe, vocals beyond Arca's previous work also harken the "don't be afraid" sample from Burial's song "Come Down With Us" from his masterpiece Rival Dealer.

"Wave Idea" - nature sample loops almost give me a Boards of Canada vibe, especially as it transitions effortlessly to instruments and more made made sounding horns (I think?)

"Nothing's Special" - evocative and thought-provoking title, I need to pour over the actual lyrics in detail later. Haunting especially in the context of what we've just heard and the references overall to his own past music and the past radio broadcast media and how, even if it's digitized or stored on tape somewhere, is eventually bound to be left alone and forgotten. Especially before the last 10-15 years most of what anyone listened to or watched by chance via local and live radio lives on solely in your fragmented memory. It's wild for me to remember existing pre-internet. Sometimes I literally day dream now in my 30s of being a 8 or 9 year old and the headspace I had then. Watching tv, listening to the radio, simply witnessing stuff IRL and knowing that beyond anyone else who was there with me those memories were mine and mine alone even though if it was via broadcast media thousands and even millions of others experienced it. It didn't have to be reiterated via social media and then redundantly amplified via likes and shares of recorded video, texts, tweets, posts, etc. That sound of click off at the end of album is fitting, it reminds me of that movement when my parents turned off the tv and I was back to being completely off-line and alone with my thoughts and feelings. No barrage of media via IG or reddit scrolling that I'm still prone to now.

This is def one of his more memorable releases for me, I think the concept was less obtuse but still very deep. Def recommend anyone who like this or the theme to it to check out "I Trawl The Megahertz" by Paddy McAloon / Prefab Sprout  - different musically but really, really similar melancholy and reflective tone.

[doublename]

After not liking Age Of at all, I'm pleasantly surprised by this album so far. I even kinda like the Weeknd track.

[fumi]

XqI6pZcHp4VD1UEc.mp4

[d-a-m-o]

 

[species8472]

this is great!

[Polytrix]

Kind of agree that if the whole album was like the second half this would Ben instabuy for me. Don't get me wrong I think this is excellent but when that kind of vocal thing ain't your bag...I just would be happy with the instrumentals. I adore Replica so the second half was lovely. 

[danshoebridge]

I'm liking this one more than Age Of, but I'll still have to cut/edit a few tracks in order to actually enjoy it. That mumble rap bullshit on track 7 has to go for a start.

[danshoebridge]

Also could Imago be a reference to this super-obscure cult synth-pop release?

https://www.discogs.com/Imago-Imago/release/2268708