R Plus Seven… Can anyone think of a decent caption for this one?

Review: Oneohtrix Point Never – R Plus Seven

Published on September 30th, 2013 | Jonny Abrams

Oneohtrix Point Never tracks tend to reveal themselves fully through headphones, ideally at that blissfully woozy state between wake and sleep. Relatively speaking, R Plus Seven could almost be called abrasive.

Daniel Lopatin has woven together a patchwork of disparate ideas somehow stitched together with sudden movements and tangents; it’s kind of avant-garde, basically, as long as prefacing the term ‘avant-garde’ with ‘kind of’ doesn’t puncture it completely.

Musical progressions remain minimal but are rendered brighter and bolder, as much being evident from the off with the swirling arpeggios, hovercraft sounds and church organ coda of “Boring Angel”.

“Americans” is quite the trip, riding a string of aural hallucinations on its way to the glitchy wonderment of “He She” and then onto the intertwined wilderness of “Inside World”, which lets off huffing valve releases and a seemingly random dispersal of electronic choir.

Juddering darts of crystalline rave synth punctuate the decidedly un-rave-like setting of “Zebra”, before “Problem Areas” proceeds to sound like the weirdest old school fantasy video game ever made.

With a synthetic orchestra going nuts, as it does again later on “Still Life”, there’s little danger of this plinky plonky oddity blending into the background. Meanwhile, the felty pangs and fizzing acidity of “Cryo” conjure a Selected Ambient Works sort of atmosphere.

“Chrome Country” verges on traditional with its church organ, electric piano and ghostly operatic vocal all swelling up in melodic tandem then falling out again…and then it’s all over, a trip that comes packaged with its very own comedown.

R Plus Seven might not be as suitable a lining for the transition into the ‘beyond’ as Replica, but that’s in part because it’s already there.

R Plus Seven is out now on Warp Records.

You can buy R Plus Seven on iTunes and on Amazon.

Rocksucker says: Four Quails out of Five!

a quail a quail a quail a quail

Artists: oneohtrix point never

About the Author

Jonny Abrams Editor of Rocksucker and the website's founder, Jonny is passionate about the music he listens to, both good and bad, as well as interviewing his favourite musicians.