Review: Oneohtrix Point Never's "Magic Oneohtrix Point Never"

"I don't know why I don't want to transform / Taking the long road home" 

Album cover for Magic Oneohtrix Point Never by Oneohtrix Point Never, designed by Robert Beatty.

Daniel Lopatin is an important man in music. On the surface, it would seem that his Oneohtrix Point Never project, a project built primarily on avant-garde Progressive Electronic compositions and vignettes, simply had a few popular albums here and there on sites like Rateyourmusic.com and the deeper end of "Music Twitter". Albums like Replica and R Plus Seven in particular earned the eyeing of many an experimental music fan with his tact and focus for texture and sampling. However, Daniel Lopatin was also, among other things, the creator of Eccojams Vol. 1. That album, almost by itself, spurred the Vapor movement and led to a greater awareness of Hauntology within music. (Hauntology in this context being a general trait in music to directly call back to, or even sample, media and culture from years past) Eccojams would also curse the internet with the 2010s phenomenon of Vaporwave that still persists today. In short, Daniel is an accomplished man.

I bring this up primarily because Magic Oneohtrix Point Never is an album primarily focused on nostalgia and hauntological experiences. The title itself hearkens back to the very first release under what would become the OPN alias, Eccojams Vol. 1 gets an indirect reference in the track title Bow Ecco, and Vaporwave production techniques are presented front-and-center when they appear on the album. It's clear from these examples that this album is directly reflective of moments that have since passed for Lopatin. This also applies lyrically, alluding to transformation or transition into a new entity or new form of life and time entirely in sprawling and anxious mannerisms. This is perhaps best displayed on Long Road Home and Shifting. 

Instrumentally, this album is all over the place. In certain stretches, it comes off artsy and glamorous while grasping a clear Pop formatting, almost emulating stuff that would be turned into a Vaporwave song back in the Eccojam or Faux-Utopian eras of Vapor. In others, it can sound similar to something off R Plus Seven while also being much more sample heavy or indirect with its sound palette inspirations. There's a clear abstraction to everything involved with Lopatin's instrumentals, possibly corroborated by his thoughts regarding the track Imago emulating a sort of unreachable and decaying beauty.

The textures on this album are really nice when they're the centerpiece of a given spot. Bow Ecco has a sort of fast crawling feel to it, with looped and sped-up/sped-down guitar arrangements and heavy reverb, almost giving the track a feeling of serenity before rapidly speeding-up samples take control of the track for the brief second they have. Tales From the Trash Stratum begins with a collage of granualized samples and noisy synths colliding against each other, almost acting as a cut-away from the previous smoother and easygoing tracks. These gradually fizz into a grandiose Space Ambient section and closing off the track with a funny stock zing sound effect. No Nightmares, the track preceding, is in a similar boat to Trash Stratum's ending, with surprise guest The Weeknd having a duet with a heavily vocoded Lopatin over bassy synths that would fit right in with the Chillwave boom of the 2010s if not for their use in such a slow, methodical context.

Magic Oneohtrix Point Never is, ultimately, a practice in dramatic, near-operatic longing for healing in a space where everything seems to be slowly wilting away. In the context of its release, what with the global pandemic still raging at a rate that is still killing people en masse, it is very striking and harrowing to listen to. It's not a sob-fest necessarily, but it definitely left a mark on me in the end. It's also very refreshing to hear OPN be more up-front with a pop-esque songwriting formula and emotional melodic setting, especially after a run of albums that felt more like a string of progressive vignettes and closed-off synth passages than traditional 'songs'. Which isn't a bad thing, mind you, it's just nice to see that he changes every once in a while. 

9/10.