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Daniel Lopatin’s eleventh studio album as Oneohtrix Point Never, Tranquilizer, is less a calming sedative and more a kaleidoscopic, restless fever dream built from the forgotten detritus of the internet. The record is conceptualised as a process-oriented deep dive, constructed almost entirely from a cache of obscure 1990s sample CDs—intended for ambient, new-age, and muzak construction kits—that Lopatin salvaged from a vanishing digital archive. This foundational concept immediately cements the album as a work of profound plunderphonics and a critical commentary on the ephemerality and overload of contemporary media.
Sonically, the album exists in a state of agitated motion, constantly lulling the listener into a false sense of security before abruptly shifting the ground beneath them. It’s a dense, often maximalist sonic collage that reframes the synthetic chintz and easy listening clichés of its source material into something complexly unsettling and profoundly moving. Tracks such as the opener “For Residue” begin with glacial soundscapes and foreboding, Pink Floyd-esque guitar before dissolving into fractured stillness. Meanwhile, “D.I.S.” represents the album’s dramatic peak, exploding into full-on rave dynamics with chattering synths and pitch-bent melodies, briefly disrupted by the startlingly nostalgic sound of 2G mobile phone interference.
Lopatin masterfully utilises the emotional spectrum of these obsolete sounds. The album’s surface textures range from the stuttering rhythms of “Cherry Blue” to the euphoric, trance-adjacent propulsion of “Rodl Glide,” yet the sense of anxiety remains palpable throughout. This is music that simultaneously celebrates and critiques the '90s—a time of burgeoning digital experimentation and commercialisation—while questioning the fragile nature of our collective audio history. Tranquilizer is a compelling and structurally ambitious addition to the OPN catalogue, cementing Lopatin's status as a pioneer who can find enchantment in the ghost-in-the-machine sounds of pop culture’s graveyard.
Tracklist
For Residue
Bumpy
Lifeworld
Measuring Ruins
Modern Lust
Fear of Symmetry
Vestigel
Cherry Blue
Bell Scanner
D.I.S.
Tranquilizer
Storm Show
Petro
Rodl Glide
Waterfalls