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Oneohtrix Point Never - Magic Oneohtrix Point Never


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On 11/6/2020 at 2:33 PM, dr lopez said:

i hate and resignedly love the artwork

it kind of encapsulates his more worts and all take on retro aesthetics which is why I like it so much

this whole album has that vibe, so much retro synth stuff is very clean and revisionist and redundant AF whereas the more unabashed stuff like late 00s / early 10s hypnagogic pop was cheesy and raw to the point of gimmick or being off-putting but over the years he's seemed to find a good balance

this album actually takes on nostalgia's good, bad, and ugly nuances and depth

Edited by joshuatxuk
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0pn always hits in the feels for me personally but this new crop of music/imagery is like maximum emotion. The album makes me feel sad in the most enjoyable way, which is a strange effect. The "Lost" video is so good but it almost makes me cry. When the dad smashes that smartphone after seeing the gore video on it...I wish somebody had done the same for me but I was already a young adult when I was stupid enough to watch all the beheadings, suicides and other shock garbage from early internet days hahaha. Special dude this Danny--best musical discovery of my life. 

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Hi Everyone! Took some time to read through this thread and listen to the album. It's just fine to me! Not really very interesting. Those new parameters R now plus 7 years old by my estimation (get it!!!!?). But hey, I'm still a sucker for the artwork, the timbres, and some of the "fun moments". Generally his "concepts" that supposedly underpin his work are fucking dumb as shit and have now completely fallen into the classic trap of over-wrought "post-" anything. He's sticking with it because that kind of talk and posturing makes critics' jobs easier. They can churn out some twaddle about this and that: it's nostalgia for rave!! it's deconstructed pop! It's a "hypnogogic journey through an alienated and acid-tinged radio station"       sure it is pal. I generally find that stuff annoying and doesn't excite me artistically. I do not however -under any circumstances- begrudge Daniel's success. Good for him (apart from the dasha bit lmao) I will be doing an 0PN run through of all his albums for today's rainy work day and see where this one sits. Initial thoughts are that it is a step up from Age Of. Which reminds me, does anyone want my Age of LP? I haven't even opened it lol

 

well, see ya!

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41 minutes ago, dr lopez said:

I will be doing an 0PN run through of all his albums for today's rainy work day and see where this one sits. Initial thoughts are that it is a step up from Age Of.

i agree, but it's still difficult to find an overall placement for it.

as his discography is essentially split into three distinct styles/time periods (or two, depending on how you generalise music) i find it way easier to rank his work within each era, as opposed to his work as a whole. it feels weird comparing age of to something like zones without people.

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just listened to them all in order. r plus seven is really really fucking good to me. the ones after are diminishing returns, although as i said this new one is better than age of. As for the pre-WARP era, replica stuck out as well below par, save the first and last tracks. Sleep Dealer and Up sound worse than most of EKT. cringe level bad. Returnal was better than I remember, but to me the highlights are Russian Mind, Zones Without People and Betrayed. I know the tracklists are all buggered up but those three have the best collection of the rifts tracks. Some happy trips down memory lane listening to those old ones. I had nostalgia for listening to nostalgic synth music. 

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On 11/13/2020 at 10:17 PM, joshuatxuk said:

it kind of encapsulates his more worts and all take on retro aesthetics which is why I like it so much

this whole album has that vibe, so much retro synth stuff is very clean and revisionist and redundant AF whereas the more unabashed stuff like late 00s / early 10s hypnagogic pop was cheesy and raw to the point of gimmick or being off-putting but over the years he's seemed to find a good balance

this album actually takes on nostalgia's good, bad, and ugly nuances and depth

I almost like the artwork but the fonts kind of kill it for me. It’s like bro relax. 

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5 minutes ago, Alcofribas said:

I almost like the artwork but the fonts kind of kill it for me. It’s like bro relax. 

i should clarify - i agree with you that a lot of the retro stuff is too polite, "revisionist" is the perfect term. i used to work at a record store for several years and you see so much absolute crap lol. so i do like that opn is doing something more appropriately gaudy and "ugly" but as a personal thing i just think there's way too many font elements lol. i think overall he has something of a everything but the kitchen sink style but also the kitchen sink, which is what i can't get into really.

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7 hours ago, Alcofribas said:

i think overall he has something of a everything but the kitchen sink style but also the kitchen sink, which is what i can't get into really.

I'm totally stealing this for the future

I largely agree, I feel like there's an element of PR and marketing that still kind of slips in that I think might account for what you hit on and it's a bit too on the nose. I feel like that's dogged all of his post-Warp signing stuff in general. It might not even be that factor but just the overall direction of the project not letting some stuff speak for itself without more garnish.

21 hours ago, dr lopez said:

some happy trips down memory lane listening to those old ones. I had nostalgia for listening to nostalgic synth music. 

I'm starting to feel that way when I revisit tapes I bought in the early 10s and especially when I re-listened to a bunch of chillwave that turned 10 years old not long ago

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I think I’m mostly agreeing with the direction of this thread. The thing that bugs me about this album is that it’s just so barely left field of pop music, and at the same time has so

much signaling that it knows what contemporary pop music sounds like.  It’s like if Andy Warhol got diamond grill or something.  

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Is this the best 0pn album? I can't seem to listen to anything else over the past couple of weeks. Everytime I press play, I can't wait for everything to unfold as a single 47 minute journey. I was the same way with R+7 and forever more probably but this one is hitting as a sort of apotheosis currently. The "Grammy winner" as it were. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've been meaning to jump in here to say that after some time with the album, I like it. I probably won't be my go-to OPN (Rifts has been in the spot from the start, though Returnal was and remains a close-second to that), but I think it's up there with r+7. 

This album more than the previous two (not counting the Safdie bros. soundtracks) seems to realize his alt-take on pop music for Hot Topic kids. Since his move to Warp, OPN albums have struck me as the Wacky Packages/Garbage Pail Kids of my favorite sort of electronic music. That's not supposed to be a knock against this stuff; quite to the contrary. But I can't shake that association. Maybe it's because of this breakfast joint I went to in Denver CO with my brother once where the bathroom was covered in those stickers and I felt an OPN track come into my head and it clicked from that point forward for me in this way. I remember reading in an interview once that he doesn't mind being Warp's appropriations artist (that's not quite the phrase he used, but that's a vague echo of the memory). I know he probably didn't mean to be quite as crass as my analogy, but that's what it makes me think of, to some extent. 

I also recall that in an interview he said he really wants to sell to those gothy teens or something. I guess like the kid in that video who plays guitar really loud because he's mad at his mom and dad. Well, a little not-subtle. If I remember correctly, he said he was going for that target audience when he made Garden of Delete. I think this one is more obviously reaching for that crowd. The performance of that Pixies-esque song on Jimmy Kimlon's Late Show, I think he has a better chance than ever to achieve that goal. And I think that will be great. It would be really cool to see a whole bunch of disillusioned middle-schoolers getting into OPN the way kids did with Nirvana when I was in 8th grade. I realize this might sound like I'm being sarcastic or negative, but I'm really not. It makes me wonder, though: I saw him open for NIN and Soundgarden a few years ago, and I remember how much the crowd was harsh on him at that time. I was actually there just for his opening act (though I was with someone who was there for the NINs.). A few people near me were like "WTF is this shit?" and "I dunno, I guess he's some DJ". This was around the time he was doing shows for the Museum of Modern Art and shit, and I really liked how his music felt like a take on some fucked-up portal from another dimension. That's one of the reasons why Rifts had such pull on me instantly. This new turn since signing to Warp, on the other hand, reminds me a bit of how Aphex did this reach-out to the MTV crowd with "Come to Daddy". That's all fine and good. But it makes me wonder: is this some intentional decision to usurp that crowd or at least that crowd's children, almost as a vindictive move because he was angry at how the crowd treated him on that tour? He had this more artsy thing going, then promptly switched after that tour. It reminds me a bit of how Trump's efforts at running for office seemed to get really serious after how harshly he was treated at that one White House Correspondent's Dinner (the one where Seth Mayors and Obama were really harsh to him and the whole room laughed and even CSPAN was like "look at this shit" with their lengthy, uncomfortable long shots on Trump's weird hair). I know that Trump was already running before that, but it seemed like it strengthened his resolve. Is that what happened here with Danny lOPatiN? 

Oh and one last thing: I liked all the videos he's released associated with this video, but I'm a bit uncomfortable with the footage of that kid actually getting his arm chopped off (the one that teenager was watching on his phone). I'm kind of torn about the morality of including things like that in a pop video. I was wondering what other folks were thinking. 

 

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15 hours ago, apriorion said:

Oh and one last thing: I liked all the videos he's released associated with this video, but I'm a bit uncomfortable with the footage of that kid actually getting his arm chopped off (the one that teenager was watching on his phone). I'm kind of torn about the morality of including things like that in a pop video. I was wondering what other folks were thinking. 

 

It's immoral and done in poor taste in this context, cheap physical claim of the surreal (but that's kinda the whole genre). Winky micro-shock for a little "artsy" buzz/self-reflection to those familiar with such gore and unnecessary visual corruption to those unfamiliar.

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18 hours ago, apriorion said:

IIt would be really cool to see a whole bunch of disillusioned middle-schoolers getting into OPN the way kids did with Nirvana when I was in 8th grade. I realize this might sound like I'm being sarcastic or negative, but I'm really not. It makes me wonder, though: I saw him open for NIN and Soundgarden a few years ago, and I remember how much the crowd was harsh on him at that time. I was actually there just for his opening act (though I was with someone who was there for the NINs.). A few people near me were like "WTF is this shit?" and "I dunno, I guess he's some DJ". 

personally, I can't see that happening in regards to the middle schoolers, but I understand the sentiment. the Nirvana thing was just so unanimous in its mass appeal, that I'm not sure anything on that level in the world of music will ever happen again. at most, OPN will bump up a few notches in the electronic music scene, but I doubt will ever reach the widespread popularity that some of those grunge bands did back in the day.

and one obvious thing I see preventing him from gaining more mass appeal is the lack of beats in most of his music. I just can't see beat-less, ambient soundscapes awash in '90s nostalgia ever being what "the kids are into these days," if that makes sense.

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  • 2 months later...

Well, I think OPN has officially accomplished Warp’s mission to infect pop music with weirdness. The Weeknd’s half time show at the SB is probably as big as it could get. 

1443575764_ScreenShot2021-02-09at12_50_35PM.png.c9491427b1277d78a57cacbc80720394.png

OPN was the musical director for the show. 

 

I especially like how OPN had this behind-the-scenes role in that show. Like that "ooze between the walls of the house of pop music" analogy he's given in some interviews. 

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going from music videos that are basically just slideshows of weird shit you found on tumblr to directing the superbowl halftime show is pretty impressive ngl. if it wasn't for grimes this might have been the craziest 2010s indie music trajectory

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On 11/23/2020 at 8:25 AM, dr lopez said:

Which reminds me, does anyone want my Age of LP? I haven't even opened it lol

I also somehow got an extra Age Of LP, with T-shirt, size M.  Any takers?

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