ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER
Dabbling in the virtual, manipulating source material and exploring the recesses of the mind; we press Daniel Lopatin on some more tangible concerns.
Nearly four years in, who do you consider to be the most important underground electronic artist to come to prominence this decade? The obvious triumvirate of Four Tet, Caribou and Bonobo have a solid case to make, balancing mainstream accessibility with a genuine connection to UK club culture, but records like Round and Up In Flames dropped two years back, so they are hardly fresh faces.
Similarly, many of the key players within that nebulous house/techno/ bass scene poked their head above the parapet as the 00s were winding down. Only perhaps Nicolas Jaar could lay claim to belonging almost exclusively to a post-2010 musical landscape, but even then, as successful as the boy wonder has been, he has just the one solo album to his name. The figure we’d put forward has three full-lengths, two collaborative records and a 3xLP compilation in the timeframe.
While Daniel Lopatin’s pop-leaning hook-up with producer Joel Ford heralded a good album (Channel Pressure) and a great EP (That We Can Play), and his record label Software has put out a spate of solid releases – most recently Huerco S.’s bracing debut – it is his work as Oneohtrix Point Never that has garnered the lion’s share of acclaim. If you count 2012’s reissue of Rifts, a mammoth assembly of early limited- run cassette & vinyl releases, Lopatin has put out one record proper per year, as well as a collaboration with ambient noise kingpin Tim Hecker. It’s an impressive body of work to amass in such a short stretch of time, even more so given that he refuses to retread old ground.
The sonic space occupied by Rifts, Returnal and Replica (learn your three Rs, kids) is broad, encompassing stargazing synth epics, hypnotic drones and loop-based vignettes stitched together from VHS archives of 80s commercials respectively; but as with all top-tier artists, a common strain binds Lopatin’s productions. A somewhat reluctant breakout, he now fronts a wave of -waves, swells of micro-genres that derive influence from the aesthetic as much as the aural. Occupying a peculiar ground between retro-fetishism and dystopian daydreaming, theirs is a world where commercial and human interests are inseparable, soundtracked by a cloud of soft New Age textures and maximalist beats that drifts around a Web 1.0 world.
Actively stepping away from the background chatter, Daniel Lopatin has returned with a new studio album and the backing of Warp Records. R Plus Seven is in some ways a neat summation of everything he is about: there are Juno jams, alien textures and wisps of deconstructed samples, but with much less clutter than any of the three preceding it. As before, he has offered up a record that requires careful investment, exploring the spaces that few others even conceive. It is the sound of an artist who could be considered leagues ahead of the competition, were he not operating on another (non-linear) plane entirely. Never say never say Never.
Your latest record R Plus Seven is out now, would you like to give it the hard sell?
Erm, I don’t know. I may not be qualified to do that, I’m not a hard sell kinda guy. Maybe you guys can do a hard sell if you like it?
Do you feel it’s difficult to express your own music? When people ask the specifics, do you struggle?
I feel like it’s tedious to explain in detail to people that don’t have the context. I’m usually tempted to find the least common denominator way to say it. Like to a family member at dinner, I just say “electronic music” and pretty much leave it at that. I tend to be pretty verbose if I don’t put a lock on it, so I’m trying to discipline myself to be a little more enigmatic.
Does that extend to press? We had you pegged as relatively shadowy.
I’m a fairly well-adjusted guy and I can speak to what I’m doing. There are often things to talk about. Naively, I think I just answer whatever anyone asks me, but it’s not really a stable answer. Having realised that, and having been a bit more weathered by these things, I’m a little bit more shy nowadays because I know typically my answers are something I won’t even believe myself a few weeks later. There are aspects of the record that, to me, are just illogical; when I’m really honest with myself, sometimes saying “I don’t know” is the right answer.
Something you hopefully feel comfortable explaining is the application of space this time round. It’s a much less busy record than Replica.
A lot of what I was thinking about when I composing for this record was how you characterise the distance between one musical object or experience, and another. To do that, it helps if it’s not so dense and vertical, which tends to obliterate distances. What I wanted to do was make something a little bit more narrative and sweeping, and naked; strip away all the smoke and mirrors and see what’s left, then work with it. With the formal constraints of what had happened in mind, then I start building in dense ideas or weird, vertical, hypnotic synth things. It was different in that sense, for sure. I do appreciate the record’s nakedness – everything is in clear view, and mostly all of what we hear on the record have been considered. In the past, I think it was less a matter of consideration and more, ‘well, this is the result of what happened, so we’re just going to go with it.’
Do you think that’s a reflection of how you view life in general? What’s your observational perspective on what goes on around you – do you view things in the micro or the macro?
That’s a good question. My honest take is micro and macro in flux, communicating in a somewhat jagged rhythm. You tend to go through life with these very concrete experiences, and an oblique sense of how they happened in retrospect. Inversely, I find that I have these very strange, obtuse experiences that really were probably inconsequential, and then I try to structure them in retrospect, and imbue them with some kind of personal meaning. I find that to be kind of troubling and strange because I have very little control over thought or expression or how I remember things, or what I want and what I actually get.
Speaking of looking back, is the high level of consideration that goes into the visual aspect of your art informed by anything in particular from your childhood?
[Pause] I have a horrible sense of my own childhood, so probably. I had a somewhat typical suburban American upbringing. Wait, your question just brought to my mind a horrible childhood memory of my hand being smashed by a rock. This kid told me to put my hand down on this cement embankment in a playground, and then he smashed it with a rock. I think probably he had something to do with it.
Do you feel an external pressure making music compared to a few years ago, as if you’re straightjacketed by public expectation? You are, for better or worse, a crossover act, and often the entry point for people to start delving deeper into this area of music.
It’s a very funny thing to me. But I don’t care, I really simply don’t. It’s kind of fascinating. What I’m saying when I put out music is ‘are we attracted to this, or do you find this somehow lurid, or interesting, or addictive on some level; or are you repulsed by it?’ So when there’s repulsion, what did people expect? By nature of what I do, there’s going to be repulsion. If I started trying to cater to expectations, I would end up … it’s like one of those carnival games when you hit the fucking thing and two others pop up, you know? I don’t know if it’s a productive approach. Although I’m sure people are very good at reverse engineering expectations, it’s tedious to me; it just hurts my brain! I’d rather take my chances.
You did seem to care when – around two months in advance of release date – the record leaked in 256kbps. You described it as ‘lazy’. Was that purely to do with it being a lower bitrate?
That’s just it. The whole experience of it ends up being this kind of … diluted … if you’re going to rip something, and leak it, just do it like a fucking pro! If you don’t have the album artwork, if you don’t have a lossless file to share, then what you’re basically saying is ‘I’m a shitty fucking cultural parasite’. It’s as if I give you this fake Céline bag, a fake version of the real thing. If you go buy a fake then that’s cool, but you start noticing the zipper is a little lower than it should be, or the material on the inside falls apart quicker. I wouldn’t say it’s such a huge deal, 256 or whatever, but like, yo, the option for 320 was right there! I’m not even saying do FLAC! If you want to do MP3 or M4A, fine, but you didn’t even do 320, so where are your priorities, buddy? You just want to get it out there as soon as possible. I don’t really care that shit’s leaked: I’ve listened to leaks, I’ve participated in stolen music, and I’m not overly judgemental about that kind of thing at all. But there is a certain aspect to it where you have to understand what you’re listening to, and what you’re experiencing – even visually – with a thing is that, if it’s not the whole package, then don’t call it that, y’know? It’s a lie.
R Plus Six?
[Laughs] Yeah. It’s this shitty, parasite-orientated iteration of it that he should’ve put him name on. That guy from the blog or whatever should have put his name on it, like ‘Da Remix’ or whatever the fuck, and take credit for it. So people know what kind of man he is. That’s all there is to that, really. I’m happy that people have heard the record and have been saying extremely nice things about it. I’ve got some strange and new experiences out of it too: people being like, “I really have to apologise to you because I downloaded your leaked record and I’m really enjoying it.” That’s fundamentally interesting to me.
What is your ideal live situation? We once saw you at All Tomorrow’s Parties at two in the morning and everyone was lying down.
Hey, I remember that! Oh, that was a killer show.
It was like walking into a gas chamber. It’s interesting how you take your music and portray it live, and whether you’re now reaching for larger venues because of the ‘sweeping’ nature of the music.
I struggle a lot with determining the right kind of environment for a set. It was actually very touching to me that at the ATP one everyone just kinda figured out what they wanted to do. That gave me purpose and energy to tap into, and I could cater to that. It was really nice, and it doesn’t happen often. You know what it is: a festival bar slot, with a bifurcation in the room between people who want something intimate and people who are just circumstantially there. I understand that, but for me, I want to be there with people who want to be there too! Maybe a space can qualify that a little bit more? So we’re trying, experimenting and attempting to find the sweet spot, and inversely to stay away from places that have historically been tricky for me to play! [Laughs]
A friend saw you just after lunch outside at a festival. This was pre-Replica, so your profile was still relatively low. It’s just not the right idea at all.
It’s horrible! When you’re first starting off you put a lot of trust in the people that are helping you out: managers, booking agents, stuff like that. You go through a few experiences and start seeing patterns emerge with what works and what doesn’t. I’ve always been baffled by it. Like, ‘you really thought this was a good idea? Or did you just not put in any time? You had other things to do or bands to look after, so you threw me to the wall?’ But we’re trying to temper that; I’m trying to temper that. Because it’s very sad in those situations too when people who came to enjoy it, or who are fundamentally into seeing what I’m doing, get the short end of the stick as much as me. They’re the ones who suffer. I’m in a bad mood, I start kinda slacking off or just lose the cojones to do it, just standing up there, biding my time because the situation’s so shit. Then when I reflect on it afterwards, I realise that, “Jesus, I fucked over all those people!” It becomes strange and a little upsetting. But I’m at a point now where I want things to be a little bit more thought-out. More considered.
Hopefully with your increased standing and the additional flexibility to chose those options, your inherent distrust of people will start dwindling.
Yes, well my inherent distrust for booking agents and managers will never change!
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R Plus Seven is out now via Warp. Oneohtrix Point Never appears at the Arnolfini, Bristol on 8 June, grab your tickets here.
Words: Gabriel Szatan
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