Even today, there is a feeling of novelty with electronica music. Genres like techno and electropop have invaded clubs, and today occupy the province of "party music," and it's very easy to write off electronica as repetitious and mediocre, compared with more traditional genres of music. A genre like dubstep or house music can seem like a fad or a youthful phase to be looked back upon or maligned by future generations.
But even in electronic music there are musicians who seek something more than making us dance, so-called "serious" musicians who use electronica as a medium of experimentation. They make music that won't be blasted from car stereos or your next house party, and have no hopes of scoring a radio hit. Their work can really only appeal to people who ascribe to the concept of "serious" music (scholars, hipsters, geeks, nerds, other musicians, etc.) Oneohtrix Point Never is one such artist.
Oneohtrix Point Never is the moniker of Brooklyn musician Daniel Loptain, who has been releasing albums of droning electronic music since 2007. He has gained some notoriety as one of the acts selected by fellow Brooklynites/hip music sensations Animal Collective to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Somerset, England, but he has none of Animal Collective's trend. Loptain primarily uses vintage synthesizers to make his music, which generally eschews vocals in favor of overlapping layers of noise and sound.
His latest album, Replica, continues this trend but also makes heavy use of samples from television advertisements. The result is sometimes startling. There is nothing familiar about Replica to the average music fan. It's not radio music, club music, party music, sports arena music, social music, etc. It's not even hip music: it's just bewildering. Every song is characterized by the same formula: synthesizers hum and ripple in the background while carefully edited samples glitch and stutter over them. Even the cover is disconcerting: a charcoal drawing featuring an unseen person looking in a handheld mirror, only to see a skeleton staring back.
There is no commercial logic to Replica: it's impossible to imagine this music advertising anything but solemnity and an almost steely fragility, much less Dr. Pepper or insurance policies. If you put on Replica at your next party, the party would die. In many ways, it's the music you'd expect to play in a dystopian future, like Blade Runner or William Gibson's "Sprawl." It has a thematic feel, in construction and execution.
It is very "serious" music, not meant to appeal to everyone, but what of it? Despite the bewilderment it incurs upon first listen, this is a fantastic album.
Replica evokes a feeling of self-reflection, similar to the inner probing of teenage goths or collegiate existentialists, but with a maturity and composure which belies posturing. This music is bleak but not sad, ruminative but not whining. The synths and samples are so meticulous, constructed tunefully but with an icy grandeur. It's like walking on the surface of a frozen lake, watching the water below ripple and morph under you feet with every step. Replica is the sound of unfamiliar electronic serenity.
There is beauty and poignancy in Replica, but you'd be hard pressed to enjoy it with other people. This music precludes people. Instead, take some time to listen to it alone, in your dorm, apartment, your old room at your parents' house, a library cell, somewhere where you won't be interrupted. If you don't have time to be alone, then Replica will be wasted on you.
Grade: A
