(Warp)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
There's something comfortingly old-fashioned about Daniel Lopatin, and not merely because his new album evokes "Revolution 9," old MIDI keyboards, Art of Noise and (on "Inside World") Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Even though his breakthrough records Returnal and Replica arrived in sync with -- and seemed of a piece with -- the peak of lo-fi bedroom music, his work as Oneohtrix Point Never suggests a kind of invention that's somehow younger, less labored, and more magical: kids playing around with VHS dubs for the hell of it, getting a kick out of the humorous trickiness of it all and the sensation of making things whoosh around before they bite, even as they always move with a purpose. R Plus Seven, a formidable achievement and his best record to date, feels like the fruit of one feverishly creative late night, even as we know such an image has been painstakingly cultivated in a real actual recording studio.
R marks Lopatin's move to prestigious Warp Records, and while it doesn't entirely leave behind the alienating drones of yore, it makes no secret of its sense of absurd fun in all its musique concrete aspirations. This is not straightforward ambient or electronic music, nor is it an act of ear-teasing aural experimentation like Nicolas Jaar's Space Is Only Noise; it's more like a movement of sorts, of teasing and usually engrossing waves of sound bumping against each other as often as they build or merge. The quintessential track is probably the second, "Americans," with its callback to the electronic tongs and heavy kalimba of early '90s worldbeat coalescing into both menace and beauty. The siren sounds and half-voice restlessness have a structure of their own, and they eventually build into a fussy but beautiful Kate Bush-like crescendo. The entire bizarre creation is bright, fragmented, and surprisingly sweet.
One reason Lopatin maintains attention for the full breadth of these forty-three minutes: the songs, already full of eternally shapeshifting life, don't go on for long -- not for Oneohtrix is the idea of a mere trance, a wander off into nowhere. At least not anymore. "He She" tampers with MIDI voices teasingly and fascinatingly for all of a minute and a half. All of R Plus Seven is structured with a sense of brevity, and with the fortifying and careful distribution (occasionally denial?) of pleasure. Beatless and busy, it's cerebral music for sure, but it's also a complete and disciplined thought.
The other reason is that the album is just intensely pleasing and -- the operative word here -- playful. It keeps consistency in all of its surprise and variance, and even betrays a bit of a sense of journey: each half begins quietly, "Boring Angel" with low-rumbling organ followed by sparkly foolishness straight out of the Trumpy-in-Pod People playbook, "Along" with ambient hiss that wakes up slowly, grouchily before finding beauty in its plod, and in the choral pad that provides Lopatin with much of his evident giddiness here. Nothing here qualifies as dance music but some songs come miraculously close given their total absence of obvious rhythm: "Zebra," with its knockout syncopation, and its more focused and relentless twin "Problem Areas" each offer a bath of sound that strikes up an impressive intensity. You can very nearly visualize Lopatin's own pleasure at what he is achieving within the framework and limitations he's set for himself. In this tiny niche, he is our maestro.
Again, it's hard to classify R Plus Seven. "Ambient avant garde music," while terribly reductive, is a decent enough descriptor, but a case could be made that declaring it such could unfairly limit its audience, which seems naturally to go far beyond the class of music fan that would typically leave time aside for either ambient or experimental electronic music. This is the kind of music that immeasurably rewards concentration, and not in an abstract sense. The final two songs gather all of these fragments of chaos into a calmed, emotional peak that are, particularly "Chrome Country," umembarrassed by their gentle beauty. These songs are gloriously pretty without being fussy or overwrought. It's possible to listen to this collection of goofoffs and weird noises and be, yeah, moved. No kidding.
[SEE ALSO:]
Replica (2011) [oh god don't read that please]
No comments:
Post a Comment