Brooklyn synth explorer Dan Lopatin has announced a new album under his solo guise Oneohtrix Point Never. Replica arrives in November, capping off the producer’s most successful year so far. After almost unanimous love for last year’s Returnal – including a place in the Quietus’ hallowed top 40 albums of 2010 – he recently released Channel Pressure as one half of synth-pop duo Ford & Lopatin and toured extensively across the world.
In contrast to the featureless landscapes of Returnal – the sonic equivalent of being sucked, without warning, out of an airlock – Replica is described as ‘an electronic song cycle based around lo-fi audio procured from television advertisement compilations.’
Outside the official remit of Oneohtrix, Lopatin’s been doing that sort of for a few years, appropriating pop songs, adverts, self-help videos and the like (usually from YouTube) and looping them into creepily distended versions of themselves. The best known is ‘Nobody Here’, where his De Burgh manages to misplace his Lady In Red somewhere along the rainbow road.
Presumably in a similar vein then, Replica‘s tracks are described as: ‘sample based meditations, as lyrical as they are ecological featuring re-purposed “ghost vocals” which serve as narration for Lopatin’s signature amorphous, ambient passages Lopatin’s commitment to his Juno-60 is still on display, but the placid, synthetic surroundings of Returnal are accelerated via darker, propulsive terrains using samplers, analogue filtering, tape manipulation, acoustic piano, plate reverb and sub-frequencies.’
The album’s artwork is very different from that of previous albums, fitting more closely alongside the washed out, heavily Xerox’d CDR feel of some of his US contemporaries:
Replica will be released on 5th November through Mexican Summer. Oneohtrix Point Never plays London’s Rhythm Factory on 17th September.
