hypersongs

Oneohtrix Point Never

Daniel Lopatin's Brooklyn project, from the Eccojams of Chuck Person to Warp albums and film scores, whose R Plus Seven (2013) closes with "Chrome Country".

Brooklyn and Warp

Daniel Lopatin was born on July 25, 1982 in Boston and records as Oneohtrix Point Never, also 0PN or OPN, with aliases including Chuck Person and Dania Shapes. He studied at Hampshire College and then archival science at Pratt Institute, inherited a Roland Juno-60 synthesizer, and became part of Brooklyn's underground noise scene. His albums include Betrayed in the Octagon (2007), Zones Without People and Russian Mind (2009), Returnal (June 22, 2010, Editions Mego, Pitchfork 8.2) and Replica (November 8, 2011, built from 1980s and 90s TV commercial audio, Pitchfork 8.8). As Chuck Person he made Eccojams Vol. 1 (2010), which helped inspire vaporwave. With Joel Ford he made Channel Pressure as Games (2011) and with Tim Hecker Instrumental Tourist (2012).

R Plus Seven (September 30, 2013) was his debut on Warp, followed by Garden of Delete (November 13, 2015), Age Of (June 1, 2018), Magic Oneohtrix Point Never (October 30, 2020), Again (September 29, 2023) and Tranquilizer (November 21, 2025, built from a removed archive of 1990s sample libraries found on the Internet Archive, Pitchfork 8.6 Best New Music). He scored The Bling Ring, Good Time (Cannes Soundtrack Award, 2017), Uncut Gems, The Curse and Marty Supreme, worked with the Weeknd on After Hours and Dawn FM and was musical director of the Weeknd's Super Bowl halftime show in 2021.

R Plus Seven

R Plus Seven runs 42:56 and was produced by Lopatin and Paul Corley; Valgeir Sigurdsson mastered it and Robert Beatty did the design. The title refers to N+7, the Oulipo technique of replacing each noun with the seventh noun after it in a dictionary. It relies on MIDI, synth presets and VSTs rather than the sampling of Replica, was the first OPN record made without the Juno-60, and Lopatin called it a calm record about domestic bliss. He told The Quietus it was made in his apartment, mostly on a computer, using non-musical information to generate MIDI points, with vocals from four or five sources including a text-to-speech program. The cover is a still from Georges Schwizgebel's 1982 film Le ravissement de Frank N. Stein.

Metacritic scored it 81; Pitchfork's Mark Richardson gave it 8.4, writing beautiful stuff, with chords and tunes and sections you remember. It reached 134 in the UK and 11 on the US dance chart, and Tiny Mix Tapes named it its album of the year; The Wire placed it sixth. Singles were "Still Life", "Problem Areas" and "Zebra".

Albums

Songs

  • Chrome Country R Plus Seven · 2013

    The closing track of R Plus Seven, the second most played song in Lopatin's live sets.

Sources

  1. Oneohtrix Point Never, Wikipedia
  2. R Plus Seven, Wikipedia
  3. Oneohtrix Point Never discography, Wikipedia
  4. Quick catch-up: Oneohtrix Point Never, DMY (2015-02-17)