Graham Reid | | <1 min read
The experimental electronica-cum-art music composer Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never), here once more softly pushes at the boundaries on an album which opens with Elseware and what sounds like a string section tuning up (“it was 56 years ago today . . .”?) before settling on a brief Romantic melody and the we weave into the title track which has a gently unsettling quality of electronic keyboards and melodic shapelessness courtesy of ascending strings and ripples on minimalist repetition.
That aspect of uncertainty, swift changes of emphasis and focus runs through these 13 pieces which can be as assertive as the crunching and disruptive World Outside or as refined as the atmospheric Locrian Midwest (which sounds off-kilter like a warped record or a mash-up of various sources from Chinese classical music and ambient music).
Lopatin has said this album is a kind of musical autobiography of what he has explored in the past, a dialogue between himself then and now. One piece is titled Memories of Music.
From that Pepper-like intro through borrowed but manipulated aspects of pop, art music, electronica and rock, to the more restful electronica of Ubiquity Road and the six minute-plus closer A Barely Lit Path (a very Eno title?), Again questions ideas of music being fixed through recordings or in time.
Fascinating as always, challenging as always too.
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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here
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