Biography
Experimental musician and composer Daniel Lopatin built his reputation primarily through his pioneering output as Oneohtrix Point Never, yet he has also carved out a prominent role as a sought-after scorer and creative partner in projects released under his birth name. These endeavors allow him to develop distinct threads of his creative outlook while demonstrating his skill at merging elevated artistic pursuits with elements drawn from video games, science fiction, anime, and commercial media. He moves with equal ease alongside figures such as Iggy Pop, DJ Earl, and Anohni, and his film scores—including the award-winning Good Time from 2017 and Uncut Gems from 2019—convey narrative with the same precision that his own recordings examine the intersections of history, recollection, and sound.
Born to Russian emigrants who possessed strong musical interests, the young Lopatin drew early influence from the synthesizer textures of Mahavishnu Orchestra and Stevie Wonder found in his father’s collection, along with classic game soundtracks like Metroid. His initial musical efforts encompassed pieces composed on his father’s Roland Juno-60 as well as the Grainers, a grunge outfit he launched in middle school alongside longtime associate Joel Ford. Following his removal from that group, Lopatin focused intensively on keyboards and guitar before reviving the Grainers during high school as an electric jazz ensemble. At college he joined a post-punk band and, while pursuing a graduate degree in archival science at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, began creating noise music.
In the mid-2000s, while performing with the trio Astronaut and developing the separate Infinity Window project, Lopatin launched Oneohtrix Point Never. He derived the project’s title from Boston radio station Magic 106.7 and introduced it via the 2007 release Betrayed in the Octagon, which carried science-fiction overtones; over the ensuing years he issued a rapid succession of recordings that encompassed the introspective Russian Mind in 2009 and the comparatively luminous and approachable Zones Without People that same year. Late in 2009 No Fun Productions compiled those two albums together with Betrayed in the Octagon and selected cassette material under the title Rifts. Lopatin extended the scope of Oneohtrix Point Never further with the 2010 Editions Mego album Returnal, blending noise elements with more immediately melodic passages. In 2011 he delivered the OPN album Replica, constructed from commercial samples and recorded for the first time in a professional studio, while also establishing the Software label and forming the duo Games—subsequently renamed Ford & Lopatin—with Ford, then still active in Tigercity.
Lopatin placed the fragmented and expansive Oneohtrix Point Never album R Plus Seven with Warp in 2013, the same year he joined Brian Reitzell to score Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring. In subsequent years he pursued a range of OPN work that included a soundtrack for Koji Morimoto’s 1995 anime Magnetic Rose and the nu-metal-inflected Garden of Delete, all while solidifying his standing as a film composer. He supplied the score for Ariel Kleinman’s 2015 feature Partisan, which centers on a cult training children as assassins. After further partnerships with Anohni, DJ Earl, and FKA Twigs, Lopatin composed the 2017 soundtrack for Good Time, the crime thriller directed by longtime friend Josh Safdie and his brother Benny; the music evoked the styles of John Carpenter and Tangerine Dream while revisiting aspects of his own earlier material. The project featured the Iggy Pop collaboration “The Pure and the Damned” and received the Soundtrack Award at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. In 2018 Lopatin contributed to David Byrne’s American Utopia, issued that March. At the close of 2019 he again teamed with the Safdie brothers for the Uncut Gems score, which deployed operatic vocals and electronics modeled on Vangelis and Jerry Goldsmith to reflect the breadth of a narrative following a New York City jeweler who stakes everything on a potential fortune.
Born to Russian emigrants who possessed strong musical interests, the young Lopatin drew early influence from the synthesizer textures of Mahavishnu Orchestra and Stevie Wonder found in his father’s collection, along with classic game soundtracks like Metroid. His initial musical efforts encompassed pieces composed on his father’s Roland Juno-60 as well as the Grainers, a grunge outfit he launched in middle school alongside longtime associate Joel Ford. Following his removal from that group, Lopatin focused intensively on keyboards and guitar before reviving the Grainers during high school as an electric jazz ensemble. At college he joined a post-punk band and, while pursuing a graduate degree in archival science at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, began creating noise music.
In the mid-2000s, while performing with the trio Astronaut and developing the separate Infinity Window project, Lopatin launched Oneohtrix Point Never. He derived the project’s title from Boston radio station Magic 106.7 and introduced it via the 2007 release Betrayed in the Octagon, which carried science-fiction overtones; over the ensuing years he issued a rapid succession of recordings that encompassed the introspective Russian Mind in 2009 and the comparatively luminous and approachable Zones Without People that same year. Late in 2009 No Fun Productions compiled those two albums together with Betrayed in the Octagon and selected cassette material under the title Rifts. Lopatin extended the scope of Oneohtrix Point Never further with the 2010 Editions Mego album Returnal, blending noise elements with more immediately melodic passages. In 2011 he delivered the OPN album Replica, constructed from commercial samples and recorded for the first time in a professional studio, while also establishing the Software label and forming the duo Games—subsequently renamed Ford & Lopatin—with Ford, then still active in Tigercity.
Lopatin placed the fragmented and expansive Oneohtrix Point Never album R Plus Seven with Warp in 2013, the same year he joined Brian Reitzell to score Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring. In subsequent years he pursued a range of OPN work that included a soundtrack for Koji Morimoto’s 1995 anime Magnetic Rose and the nu-metal-inflected Garden of Delete, all while solidifying his standing as a film composer. He supplied the score for Ariel Kleinman’s 2015 feature Partisan, which centers on a cult training children as assassins. After further partnerships with Anohni, DJ Earl, and FKA Twigs, Lopatin composed the 2017 soundtrack for Good Time, the crime thriller directed by longtime friend Josh Safdie and his brother Benny; the music evoked the styles of John Carpenter and Tangerine Dream while revisiting aspects of his own earlier material. The project featured the Iggy Pop collaboration “The Pure and the Damned” and received the Soundtrack Award at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. In 2018 Lopatin contributed to David Byrne’s American Utopia, issued that March. At the close of 2019 he again teamed with the Safdie brothers for the Uncut Gems score, which deployed operatic vocals and electronics modeled on Vangelis and Jerry Goldsmith to reflect the breadth of a narrative following a New York City jeweler who stakes everything on a potential fortune.
Albums
Uncut Gems - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
2019
Instrumental Tourist
2014
FRKWYS Vol. 7: Borden, Ferraro, Godin, Halo & Lopatin
2011
Singles
