“It’s pop, right? This is my Moby record!”

Daniel Lopatin has produced music for Anohni, FKA Twigs and David Byrne, he has created remixes for Nine Inch Nails and Ryuchi Sakamoto, and he won the Cannes Soundtrack Award for GOOD TIME which featured a collaboration with Iggy Pop. On his latest album as Oneohtrix Point Never AGE OF he collaborates with James Blake (album production & keyboards), Anohni (vocals), Prurient (vocals), Kelsey Lu (keyboards) and Eli Keszler (drums). AGE OF is frequently considered OPN’s most accessible release to date. But even if it’s the most collaborative album he made, even if it features the human voice more than his previous work, even if he considers it a pop-album … you might have a hunch that Daniel Lopatin’s music is still as challenging as it ever was. AGE OF is without a doubt a hugely ambitious album and to top it all off its release is accompanied by a series of live shows called MYRIAD, a four-part epochal song cycle that combines theatre, installation art and musical performance.

AGE OF is full of anxiety and chaos and it’s probably a challenging listen for the majority of people. It’s music made by an internet addict for other internet addicts – or at least it deals with information overload, with the emotional exhaustion of endless scrolling. But there are also moments of sublimity and serene beauty, i.e. when Anohni’s voice breaks through the chaos. AGE OF is as unsettling as it is stimulating. The future will tell if it’s really OPN’s magnum opus as some critics have already labeled it. But I definitely recommend to give it a try, maybe go see one of the MYRIAD live shows if you have the chance and watch the video for the track BLACK SNOW below.

  • “

    An album that sometimes sounds like prog rock and sometimes like jazz made by a bunch of stoned robots who are living through an apocalypse.

    Vulture
    Sam Hockley-Smith
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    It’s everything you could hope for from an OPN record, but somehow on a much larger, grander scale. Cataclysmic chaos gives way to moments of total ecstasy.

    The Fader
    Salvatore Maicki
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    AGE OF is the sound of an internet addict sifting through the digital ruins, part of a culture jamming legacy for future generations, should they exist.

    Resident Advisor
    Matt McDermott
  • “

    The whole thing is so beautiful and strange and off-kilter and absorbing — a lovely and insular personal pop album, warped beyond all recognition.

    Stereogum
    Tom Breihan
  • “

    In the face of extinction, the human mind seeks narrative. It wants to be the action hero diverting the disaster so that real life can continue unimpeded. AGE OF floats the idea that the disaster itself might be real life.

    Pitchfork
    Sasha Greffen
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    It shouldn’t all hold together, but it does. The wrongness is kind of the point: a warning that our own ideas about our ancestors’ lives and values are surely just as misguided as the future civilization’s ideas about us.

    Spin
    Andy Cush