Magic Oneohtrix Point Never

As ever, it's as unpredictable as it is beguiling. [Jan 2021, p.31]

It is a personal, self-referential record, then, but one of the tenets of radio is the shared listening experience it provides, the sense of togetherness. It isn’t too much of a reach to say that listening to this album helps to process and make sense of these times and, especially, of the state of play of pop-adjacent electronic music.

It's a beautifully eclectic one. [Dec 2020, p.97]

Lopatin dispenses with radio’s interchangeable verse chorus verse format, instead replicating the labyrinthine ways the internet once promised formerly unreachable music might become graspable before being commoditised.

Like any (sorta) self-titled mid-career album, this one functions best as a thrilling overview of what OPN is capable of, from the sample-driven soundscapes of his earlier releases (“Answering Machine”) to the ominous, cinematic thrall of the Uncut Gems soundtrack (“Shifting”). Oneohtrix Point Never’s music has never sounded like it’s angling to get played on radio stations. With Magic Oneohtrix Point Never, he creates his own instead.

The album still comprises some truly enchanting touches that could only have come from him, and often they appear when working around a vocalist. These pop turns envision a world where radio hits have a bit more depth and experimentation, and if Lopatin’s output can continue to minutely steer mainstream music that way, then so much the better.

Magic Oneohtrix Point Never touches upon all Lopatin’s usual themes: memory and forgetting, nostalgia, the mystery of taste. But where his treatment of those ideas can sometimes seem academic, the album is shot through with a powerful and pervasive sense of melancholy.

There’s a powerful cohesion to the collection that makes it feel greater than the sum of its parts, with several standout fusions of singing and instrumentation/production as only Lopatin could yield.

Overstuffed with ideas, some of Magic Oneohtrix Point Never's odd juxtapositions and clever references feel merely "neat." You don't get the sense Lopatin's deeply invested—more that he's throwing concepts at the wall and seeing what sticks. There are stunning moments on Magic Oneohtrix Point Never.