Oneohtrix Point Never

Daniel Lopatin channels his experimental vision through Oneohtrix Point Never, probing the overlaps between history, recollection, and sound via nostalgic synthesizer reveries as well as denser constructions. Early OPN recordings assembled in the lauded 2009 anthology Rifts evoked Tangerine Dream as a clear predecessor, yet subsequent outings quickly unveiled additional dimensions by merging high-art concerns with pop-culture touchstones such as video games, science fiction, anime, and commercials, the last of which received deft sampling treatment on Replica in 2011. Following his move to Warp Records, Oneohtrix Point Never pursued greater risk on Garden of Delete from 2015, an unlikely yet affecting blend of metal, trance, R&B, and mainstream pop. Around the same period Lopatin earned recognition as a film composer while collaborating freely with Iggy Pop, DJ Earl, and Anohni. As the decade closed, OPN reached a high point with Age Of in 2018, which merged pop material and ambitious pieces, then continued with the more personal Magic Oneohtrix Point Never two years later.

Raised in Massachusetts by Russian emigrants who favored music, Lopatin drew from the synthesizer textures of Mahavishnu Orchestra and Stevie Wonder in his father’s collection, the eclectic programming of nearby college and freeform stations, and enduring game scores such as Metroid. Initial efforts encompassed pieces crafted on his father’s Roland Juno-60 as well as the Grainers, a grunge outfit he launched with longtime associate Joel Ford while still in middle school. After his expulsion from that band, Lopatin concentrated on keyboards and guitar before reviving the Grainers in high school as an electric jazz ensemble. At college he joined a post-punk group and, as a graduate student in archival science at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, launched a noise project.

Amid work with the trio Astronaut and another solo outlet, Infinity Window, in the mid-2000s, Lopatin adopted the Oneohtrix Point Never moniker, derived from Boston’s Magic 106.7 station. The 2007 debut Betrayed in the Octagon signaled the project’s science-fiction orientation, reinforced by his Roland Juno-60 and Korg Electribe ES-1 sampler. Cassette releases including Transmat Memories in 2008 prepared the ground for a prolific 2009 that encompassed a cassette collaboration with Keith Fullerton Whitman plus two further albums, the introspective Russian Mind and the brighter, more approachable Zones Without People. These two LPs, together with Betrayed in the Octagon and selected cassette tracks, appeared as the 2009 No Fun Productions collection Rifts. Lopatin ventured further with the 2010 Editions Mego album Returnal, folding noise alongside clearer melodies into the record. He also established the Software imprint and, with Ford (then still active in Tigercity), the duo Games, later renamed Ford & Lopatin. In 2011 Oneohtrix Point Never issued Replica, built from commercial samples and Lopatin’s first studio-recorded album, while partnering with visual artist Nate Boyce on the installation Reliquary House, whose score surfaced on the 2012 split with Rene Hell titled Music for Reliquary House/In 1980 I Was a Blue Square. The Tim Hecker collaboration Instrumental Tourist likewise appeared that year.

Oneohtrix Point Never joined Warp for 2013’s R Plus Seven, containing some of Lopatin’s most fractured and ambitious material to that point. That same year he teamed with Brian Reitzell on the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring and contributed to a Warp–Tate Gallery project with a composition prompted by Jeremy Deller’s The History of the World, which mapped connections between acid jazz and brass bands. Selections from Rifts and R Plus Seven surfaced in the 2014 HBO documentary Love Child, which examined video-game addiction. Further 2014 activity included Commissions I, a Record Store Day release of works written for the Polish Icons project at Sacrum Profanum and other commissions. That October the live world premiere of Lopatin’s score for Koji Morimoto’s 1995 anime Magnetic Rose took place at Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics. Oneohtrix Point Never also supported Nine Inch Nails and Soundgarden on their July and August dates, delivering half-hour sets of cyberdrone rather than album material. Commissions, Vol. 2 arrived on Record Store Day 2015 and contained an excerpt from the Magnetic Rose score plus “Bullet Hell Abstraction,” a two-part work inspired by Manabu Namiki’s game music and commissioned by the Red Bull Music Academy. The same year brought Lopatin’s score for Partisan, Ariel Kleinman’s film concerning a cult that trains children as assassins. November 2015 saw Garden of Delete, sparked by Lopatin’s touring experience with Nine Inch Nails and Soundgarden together with a return to guitar; the album reached number two on Billboard’s Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart. Subsequent partnerships involved Anohni, DJ Earl, and FKA Twigs, while Lopatin resumed soundtrack duties with his 2017 score for Good Time, the crime thriller directed by longtime friend Josh Safdie and his brother Benny. Evoking John Carpenter and Tangerine Dream as well as Lopatin’s own earlier output, and featuring the Iggy Pop collaboration “The Pure and the Damned,” the score earned the Soundtrack Award at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. The following year proved equally active: Lopatin contributed to David Byrne’s American Utopia, released in March 2018. That May Oneohtrix Point Never unveiled Myriad, a four-part epochal song cycle blending electronic and classical elements with cellist Kelsey Lu and Prurient; both artists also appeared on June’s Age Of. One of OPN’s most accessible yet ambitious albums, it traversed folk, black metal, R&B, and chamber music while incorporating Anohni and James Blake, and it reached number eight on Billboard’s Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart. That July’s Station EP supplemented Age Of with material originally created for A Message from Earth, a 2017 tribute to NASA’s Golden Record Project. November brought Love in the Time of Lexapro, an EP featuring Ryuichi Sakamoto and (Sandy) Alex G alongside further Myriad excerpts.

At the close of 2019 Lopatin rejoined the Safdie brothers for the widely praised score to Uncut Gems. Early the next year he produced tracks for Moses Sumney’s græ and the Weeknd’s After Hours, and he appeared with the Weeknd on Saturday Night Live. While shaping After Hours, Lopatin began work on the next Oneohtrix Point Never album, recording in his bedroom studio and at a western Massachusetts residence throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Prompted by radio’s connective capacity, October 2020’s Magic Oneohtrix Point Never presented a more song-oriented iteration of his fragmented approach, paying tribute to formative sounds and featuring Arca, Caroline Polachek, and the Weeknd; like Age Of, it reached number eight on the Billboard Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart.

Lopatin extended his Weeknd partnership by serving as musical director for the Super Bowl LV halftime show in early 2021 and executive-producing the international chart-topper Dawn FM in 2022. That year he also produced Soccer Mommy’s Sometimes, Forever and contributed to Weyes Blood’s And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow. Additional scores encompassed “The Viewing,” an episode of Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities directed by Panos Cosmatos, and music for Benny Safdie’s darkly comedic series The Curse with Nathan Fielder. Lopatin returned in September 2023 with Oneohtrix Point Never’s tenth album, Again. Reconsidering his musical identity from the vantage of his forties, the record’s ambitious collages involved composer/curator/conductor Robert Ames, Ensemble NOMAD, Jim O’Rourke, Lee Ranaldo, Xiu Xiu, and others, together with AI-generated material.