Influences:
- Eduard Artemyev, Aphex Twin, Autechre, Brian Eno, Chick Corea, Dr. Dre, Fennesz, Gang Starr, Herbie Hancock, Kraftwerk, Paul Lansky, Legowelt, My Bloody Valentine, Tom Recchion, Return to Forever, Terry Riley, Stevie Wonder, Soundgarden, Isao Tomita, Vangelis, Wu-Tang Clan, Yellow Magic Orchestra
Oneohtrix Point Never is the recording alias of Brooklyn-based experimental musician Daniel Lopatin (born 25 July 1982), also one half of synth-pop duo Ford & Lopatin.
His earlier work, composed largely of harmonic and glacial drone compositions, reminiscent of the works of Vangelis or Boards of Canada's more ambient moments, has given way in recent releases to a more obtuse, sample-based style, revolving heavily around microsecond-based vocal edits, musique concrete techniques and manipulation of pop structures. He replaced Death Grips as the opening act for the Nine Inch Nails / Soundgarden summer 2014 tour. In 2017, he composed the soundtrack for the Safdie Brothers' film Good Time and would collaborate with them again for their 2019 film Uncut Gems.
He can be found on Twitter
and YouTube.
Discography
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As Oneohtrix Point Never
Studio Albums
- Betrayed in the Octagon (2007)
- Transmat Memories (2008)
- A Pact Between Strangers (2008)
- Zones Without People (2009)
- Russian Mind (2009)
- KGB Nights/Blue Drive (2009)*
- Memory Vague (2009)*
- Returnal (2010)
- Chuck Person's Eccojams (2010, as Chuck Person)
- Replica (2011)
- Music for Reliquary House / In 1980 I Was a Blue Square (2012)*
- R Plus Seven (2013)
- Garden of Delete (2015)
- Good Time (2017)*
- Age Of (2018)
- Magic Oneohtrix Point Never (2020)
- Again (2023)
Other Releases
- Hollyr (2008, EP)
- Ruined Lives (2008, EP)
- Power In That Which Compels You (2009, EP)*
- Young Beidnahga (2009, EP)
- Scenes With Curved Objects (2009, EP)
- Rifts (2009, Compilation)*
- Dog in the Fog (2012, Remixes)
- Commissions I (2014, EP)
- Commissions II (2015, EP)
- Love in the Time of Lexapro (2018, EP)
Misc Aliases
As Dania Shapes
- Soundsystem Pastoral (2006)
- Holograd (2008)
As Chuck Person
- Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1 (2010)
- A.D.D. Complete (2012)
Collaborations
- Days of Thunder (2009)*
- That We Can Play (2010)*
- Channel Pressure (2011)*
- Instrumental Tourist (2012)*
Oneohtrix Point Never's music contains the following tropes:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Exploited repeatedly on Again, which, among other things, turned a voice-enhancing software loose on several instrumental passages.
- Arc Number: Several phone numbers with the area code 617 (which used to be his) show up in Garden Of Delete.
- Black Comedy: OPN's is some of the bleakest out there.
- The idea for "Toys 2" came when Lopatin learned that Robin Williams' will explicitly states that he is not to be resurrected via CGI or hologram; thus, this song is about Williams literally and figuratively being revived by CGI against his will to star in a sequel to his 1992 film Toys.
- "Love in the Time of Lexapro" is a cheeky title for a song shining attention on the fact that SSRIs, a form of antidepressant, are responsible for declining sex lives.
- Concept Album:
- Garden of Delete is about (and designed to sound like) the angst of being a Hormone-Addled Teenager, with Teens Are Monsters and Body Horror bits in it.
- Age Of is about an inverted Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence event in the future, with A.I.s left on Earth who want to be like dumb humans by combing through the entirety of human culture]. The accompanying live show, MYRIAD, follows a character named Puppet and his rat friends as they are led through an entire cycle of ages by one such AI.
- Darker and Edgier: Garden of Delete, which eschews the ambient/New Age-inspired sound of previous albums for an abrasive tone inspired by grunge, metal, glitch and industrial music.
- Epic Rocking: "Suite from Magnetic Rose," from the EP Commissions II, is a 19-minute-long live score for Magnetic Rose, one of the shorts of the 1995 anime anthology Memories.
- Fading into the Next Song: Almost all of Eccojams.
- Fake Radio Show Album: Magic Oneohtrix Point Never is structured in the style of a radio station broadcast, specifically paying homage to the Boston radio station Magic 106.7.
- Future Imperfect:
- His take for Eccojams is that a civilization from 10,000 years into the future would try to recreate Top 40 hits of today and some decades before, but get it all wrong.
- Age Of also looks at a future civilization: this time, it's the A.I.s still alive after humanity is long dead, alternatively trying to recreate the past to become humans themselves and praying for death.
- Gratuitous Panning: The introduction of "Format & Journey North" oscillates between left and right channels.
- Many tracks on Eccojams have echo effects that alternate between the left and right speakers.
- I Call It "Vera": He calls his own Roland Juno-60 "Judy".
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Four albums, one EP, and one compilation start with the letter "R"; Ruined Lives, Russian Mind, Rifts, Returnal, Replica, and R Plus Seven. Lampshaded during his Reddit AMA. This tradition was eventually broken by Garden of Delete.
- Jump Scare: End Of Life Entertainment Scenario #1's music video has occasional flashes of decaying bodies taken from Manhunter.
- Last Note Nightmare: "A4"/"Demerol" and "A8" from Eccojams. The former uses a very disturbing flange effect while the latter ends with a sudden wall of static that sounds like a rocket taking off.
- Inverted in the context of a whole album with "Nil Admirari", in contrast to the rest of Returnal.
- Lonely Piano Piece: "Replica", with added synth instruments.
- Looped Lyrics: All of Eccojams.
- Mind Screw:
- The promotional campaign for Garden of Delete, which consisted of an elaborate Alternate Reality Game featuring a fictional 'hypergrunge' band and a teenage alien suffering from 'perpetual puberty' as an influence over the album. Yeah.
- Garden of Delete itself is pretty weird too. A lot of tracks have short pauses, which range from samples of other songs, electroacoustic guitars to distorted synths, drastically change key a lot, and one song is just Repetitive Audio Glitch taken up to eleven to an almost djent-like timbre.
- Mythology Gag: The title of the album Magic Oneohtrix Point Never comes from Lopatin's original stage name on early releases before shortening it to Oneohtrix Point Never.
- New Sound Album:
- Replica is a complete 180 from OPN's early work, with the album largely composed of '80s commercial samples.
- R Plus Seven is another 180, this time featuring tracks composed using MIDI hardware, sounding like '90s computer music in the process.
- Garden of Delete is self-described hyper-grunge, influenced by the likes of '90s alternative metal like Alice in Chains and Soundgarden.
- Age Of combined numerous discrete influences from several separate eras (including Lopatin's entire back catalogue), along with extensive guest appearances from numerous musicians Lopatin shared a background with.
- Again carries on the style of Age Of and Magic Oneohtrix Point Never while also bringing in a rich orchestral layer.
- Nostalgia Filter: Discussed.OPN: It's depressing that people would buy these DVDs of old commercials and watch them while eating Cheetos. And it's annoying when a lot of my stuff is framed as "ultra-nostalgic music" because ultra-nostalgic music to me would be The Strokes. There is nothing wrong with it, but I don't feel like I'm that nostalgic. I'm trying to think about it as something that people feel.
- Pop-Star Composer: Did the soundtracks to The Bling Ring, Partisan and Good Time.
- Sampling:
- Replica takes samples from '80s commercials and turns them into musical pieces.
- And of course, Eccojams, which takes loops from various pop songs, slows them down, and often adds lots of stereo delay.
- Punny Name: Oneohtrix's unusual moniker is a play-on words of Magic 106.7, a radio station based in Daniel's native Boston. The connection was a lot more apparent when the project used to called Magic Oneohtrix Point Never, and especially the album of the same name.
- Self-Backing Vocalist / Voice of the Legion: At several points in Garden of Delete, most prominently "Animals" and "Sticky Drama." Invoked on Age of.
- Shout-Out:
- Oneohtrix Point Never came from Boston soft rock station Magic 106.7.
- The title and art for Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol 1 comes from Ecco the Dolphin.
- For the "oceangrunge" album Garden of Delete, Lopatin issued a variant of the Korn logo, sans the K and with the R flipped and turned into a P, so that it spelled OPN instead◊.
- The cover of "Drawn and Quartered◊" is a copy of the cover to an album named "Terrestrial Journey◊".
- His designer T-shirt "Runaway Horse" has Felix the Cat and the Grateful Dead skull as Eyeless Faces, which also references found artist Mark Leckey.
- "Toys 2" off Age Of, scores an imagined sequel to Toys.
- The music video for "Black Snow" alludes to, among other things, a performance piece done at the Fukushima Daiichi plant site following the disaster. The lyrics themselves are adapted from a Cybernetic Culture Research Unit essay.
- "The Station" appears to share a setting with Who Goes There? by way of John Carpenter's The Thing.
- Story Arc: Age of is divided into four ages: Ecco, Harvest, Excess, and Bondage.
- Synthetic Voice Actor: Dee Klatt of Chipspeech is the primary vocalist on Garden of Delete, joined by Dandy 704 on "Animals".
- Title 1: Eccojams Vol. 1. There's no volume 2, but he ambiguously said he has "multiple volumes of eccojams in the cryotank set to defrost in the distant future".note
- This is referenced in Garden of Delete with a track called "ECCOJAMC1".
- Updated Re-release: His 2 CD compilation album, "Rifts", was re-released as a 3 CD / 5 LP album, and new tracks listed.
- Vaporwave: If not the Trope Maker with Eccojams, certainly the Trope Codifier.
