Written by Maya-Rose Torrão
Daniel Lopatin started recording under the name Oneohtrix Point Never in the early 2000’s, and since then has had a long career of writing, recording and performing music. The experimental electronic musician has now released eight studio albums and has worked on projects with a diverse list of artists such as Anohni from Antony and the Johnsons, Ishmael Butler, David Byrne, FKA Twigs, and Tim Hecker. The artist has been very busy this year and has also just released another EP a couple of days ago with some more content from his latest album’s recording sessions. Oneohtrix Point Never released his most recent full-length studio album last month, titled ‘Age Of’ and has just shared two videos this week for two songs off the album: ‘We’ll Take It’ and ‘The Station’.
If one were to Oneohtrix Point Never’s music as ‘experimental’, then I believe that the same can be said for his two most recent video releases. The first video is for the track ‘We’ll Take It’, which features nightmarish visions brought to life by amateur-style 3D animations and eerie low-lighting. The dark glitch beats of the song paired with samples of high-pitched children’s voices and sound effects set to images of frozen smiling car salesmen, skulls, bones and rats makes for a disconcerting watch. The video was directed by Nate Boyce, who has been working with Oneohtrix Point Never for many years on different kinds of surreal music and 3D art mash-ups. In an interview about his work with the Oneohtrix Point Never, Boyce explained, “Well, what I’m interested in is a kind of neo-materialist understanding of digital information. It’s all malleable and plastic like any other material and I think a lot of artists are beginning to address the implications of that.”
Watch the video for ‘We’ll Take it’ below.
A video for ‘The Station’ was released on the same day as ‘We’ll Take It’ and this time Oneohtrix Point Never teamed up with another artist with a penchant for the strange and dark: Daylen Seu. The art style is also somewhat unsettling and surreal but in a different way to Boyce’s work. Seu has created a surreal universe that mashes a hand-drawn aesthetic with CGI shading that seems to match up quite flawlessly with the mood of this track by Oneohtrix Point Never.
Watch the video for ‘The Station’ below.
Follow Oneohtrix Point Never:
Soundcloud – Facebook – Instagram – YouTube
