Oneohtrix Point Never Again

Each album from Oneohtrix Point Never, the project of songwriter and producer Daniel Lopatin, is informed by an open-ended theme or prompt. This allows each release to feel tied to some general philosophy while still being wholly unique. On 2015’s Garden of Delete, he made songs built around made-up scrapped vocals from pop stars; 2018’s Age Of pictured a world gone insane, with nothing left but artificial intelligence to determine what cultural touchstones were deemed worth keeping. On his 2023 album Again, the artist once again concocts a daring concept, this time imagining the project as a conversation between his current and former selves. On the album he asks, “What’s worth keeping? What do we throw away?” Among the detritus that inherently comes alongside radical technological development, what will outlast us? Lopatin recruited a number of collaborators for the project, including Robert Ames, Lee Ranaldo, Jim O’Rourke, Xiu Xiu and Lovesliescrushing. While they’re mostly disparate in spirit, each artist has at times toyed with the interplay between electric and acoustic clashes, which Lopatin highlights on Again. Gorgeously arranged string suites come crashing against grating synths on the title track; massive electronic drums launch Lopatin’s voice towards the heavens on “Krumville”. Acoustic guitar strums get similarly propelled on “Memories of Music”. Lopatin collides sounds from different eras of his discography, highlighting both the diversity of his work and the underlying ideas he returns to time and again. There’s no such thing as one Oneohtrix Point Never signature sound; Lopatin’s ear is too shifty, too excited by what comes next and how it emerges. His trademark is a hodgepodge of inspirations—from full orchestral symphonies to barely perceptible VCR buzz. On Again, Daniel Lopatin taps into all these worlds—the ones he has created and the futures he imagines—to capture a moment in time, before it shifts once again.