Replica | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | November 8, 2011 | |||
Studio | Mexican Summer Studios, Brooklyn, New York | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 40:54 | |||
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Producer |
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Oneohtrix Point Never chronology | ||||
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Replica is the fifth studio album by American electronic musician Daniel Lopatin under the stage name Oneohtrix Point Never, released on November 8, 2011, via Mexican Summer and Software. It features co-production by Joel Ford and Al Carlson, and was Lopatin's first work to be recorded in a studio. Stylistically, the album marks a shift away from Lopatin's previous synth-based works under the alias, instead showcasing a sample-based approach utilizing audio from 1980s and 1990s television advertisements. [1]
Upon release, Replica received positive reviews from music critics and subsequently featured in the year-end lists of the best albums of 2011 by several publications, including The Boston Globe , Pitchfork , and Resident Advisor . The album peaked in the top 10 of the Billboard Top Dance/Electronic Albums and Heatseekers Albums charts.
In contrast to his previous synthesizer-based releases as Oneohtrix Point Never, Replica was produced around audio samples from television advertisements procured by Lopatin, with the ads mainly dating back to the 1980s and 1990s. [2] He proceeded to isolate the audio from the commercials, listening for sounds that would strike him as being "harmonically intense" and sampling them. [2] This approach built on his 2010 sample-based cassette release Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1 under the alias Chuck Person. [3] Lopatin described the album as having "as much to do with environmental, broadcasted, and club sounds as it does with more direct musical influences." [4] Asked why he opted to use commercials as sample sources, Lopatin described his process as "looking for old things that are meaningful" then "restructuring and rearranging it to interfere with the original narrative and creating this new poetry." [5] His production process involved opening several music players simultaneously to listen to several sounds in tandem, which he described as "raw listening and sketching". [2] Lopatin focused particularly on "strange pauses and little incidental sounds" found in the commercials to use as samples. [6]
Lopatin attributed the title to "the idea of the replica in culture as a way we deal with the decline of knowledge, or human knowledge going to waste because we're not immortal. But it's not a solution, it's just a way of coping with those mysteries... it's like an artistic attempt at conveying the original, and not a copy, so there's inherit failure to it." [7] The cover for Replica is a 1936 illustration by Virgil Finlay from the pulp magazine Weird Tales , depicting a skeletal vampire looking at himself in a mirror. [8] Lopatin felt that the image was an appropriate metaphor for the title and described it as "really morbid, but there's humor to it, too, because the skeleton's hair is pasta-like", which he called "a good approximation of how I deal with lots of depressing things—just put pasta hair on top and it's okay." [6] [7]
Replica was Lopatin's first album to be completed in a formal studio setting, with recording sessions taking place at the complex owned by his label Mexican Summer. [9] He conceived it as "an electronic song cycle" and, despite the lack of conventional singing on the album, aimed for the album's tracks "to feel like vignettes that are recognizable and hummable, instead of just letting things glide ambiently." [2] Replica is more substantially sample-based than Lopatin's previous work, and it has been characterized by Miles Bowe of Stereogum as "chopped and screwed plunderphonics" [10] and by Larry Fitzmaurice of The Fader as "skyward sampledelia." [11] Exclaim! 's Mark E. Rich describes it as "a sharp left turn that has him indebted to early 2000s electronic visionaries like Matmos, Akufen and Matthew Herbert, utilizing a specific sample source across the record." [12] The presence of rhythmic structures is more apparent in the album's songs, albeit through the use of sampled loops as opposed to conventional drum tracks and beats. [13] In addition to the Roland Juno-60 synthesizer, which was prominently used on previous Oneohtrix Point Never albums, Lopatin and collaborators Al Carlson and Joel Ford utilized other digital instruments, including samplers such as the Roland SP-555 and Akai MPC and synthesizers such as the Roland D-50, Yamaha CS-01 and Spectrasonics Omnisphere. [14]
Lopatin, Carlson, and Ford opted to keep Replica minimal in nature, and Lopatin noted that they "had a unwritten rule that we wouldn't get into more than 8 tracks per song". [14] Jon Pareles of The New York Times identifies Lopatin's "preferred sounds" as sustained synthesizer chords and fragmented piano bits "that well up gradually, then ripple off into the distance." [15] Jeff Siegel of Resident Advisor notes that "where many of his peers and forebears build their ambience from microscopic variations on the same few sounds, Lopatin doesn't settle for long", citing "Andro", where opening synthesizer swells eventually give way to a "drain-swirl of errant ticks and drums", and the "cut-up vocals" of "Remember". [16] "Power of Persuasion" incorporates a shifting series of piano figures [13] from an American Express commercial featuring Michel Legrand, [17] and "Sleep Dealer" is built around several looped samples from a Wrigley's gum commercial, [18] with repetition of the piece being tweaked from section to section. [14] [19] One of the album's more "percussive moments", "Child Soldier" incorporates "voices programmed into a martial cadence" juxtaposed with distorted samples and synthesizer sounds, and Carlson describes the song as "the thesis of the record; smooth meets agro." [14] [15]
On August 17, 2011, Daniel Lopatin announced that Replica would be released on November 8 via Software, the imprint operated by Lopatin and Joel Ford, and Mexican Summer, and revealed the album's cover and track listing. [20] On September 17, Lopatin previewed material from the album at a show held at the Rhythm Factory in London. [21] In the build-up leading to the release of Replica, Lopatin released three songs from the album: "Sleep Dealer" on September 7, [22] "Replica" on October 12, [23] and "Nassau" on October 28. [24] In addition, Lopatin released the music video for "Replica", a self-made collage of cartoon footage, on October 17, [25] and the video for "Sleep Dealer", directed by Inga Copeland and Dean Blunt, on October 31. [26] The album was made available for streaming in its entirety on November 1. [27] On November 8, Replica was made available for purchase in CD, LP, and digital download formats. [28] It peaked at numbers ten and seven on the Billboard Top Dance/Electronic Albums and Heatseekers Albums charts, respectively, for the week ending November 26, 2011. [29] [30]
Aggregate scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
AnyDecentMusic? | 7.7/10 [31] |
Metacritic | 80/100 [32] |
Review scores | |
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [13] |
The A.V. Club | B [33] |
The Guardian | [34] |
Mojo | [35] |
MSN Music (Expert Witness) | A− [36] |
NME | 8/10 [37] |
The Observer | [38] |
Pitchfork | 8.8/10 [39] |
Spin | 8/10 [40] |
XLR8R | 9/10 [41] |
Replica received generally positive reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 80, based on 32 reviews. [32] Mark Richardson of Pitchfork found "a real sense of discovery here, or possibilities being probed" and wrote that "what's most striking about Replica is how well-constructed these tracks are, which is especially impressive given the record's brevity". [39] John Doran of NME acknowledged that "the theory side of what he does is interesting, but above and beyond that he continues to herald the next stage of analogue future psychedelia beyond Boards of Canada's Music Has the Right to Children ." [37] The A.V. Club 's Christian Williams wrote that "its great strength and most beguiling feature is its ability to sand spiky textures down into soothing ones, and to transform the anodyne into the anxiety-inducing, simply through repetition." [33] Spin 's Philip Sherburne called Replica "both lyrical and hypnotic" and "a deeply romantic testament to the possibilities of life in the Cloud." [40]
Phil Mongredien, writing in The Observer , called Replica "an ambitious electronic song cycle" that "rewards repeated listening". [38] K. Ross Hoffman of AllMusic stated that though the album's reliance on samples of commercials "makes for an intriguing compositional back-story—and it clearly provided him a rich sound palette from which to draw—it's rare that that source material is specifically evident while listening; at best it functions on a more energetic, subconscious level." [13] Robert Christgau, in his "Consumer Guide" column for MSN Music , commended Lopatin's "taste for content as well as form and for creation as well as contrarianism". [36] Dave Simpson of The Guardian stated that "if Replica occasionally drifts – literally – too close to the whiffy bongs and flotation tanks of 90s chillout, it's never predictable, and is best experienced in a continuous sitting". [34]
Replica appeared in several publications' year-end lists of the best albums of 2011. The Boston Globe critic Michael Brodeur named it the year's best record and praised it as a "whole new way to understand ambient". [42] The album also placed in the year-end lists of publications such as Clash , [43] Consequence of Sound , [44] Exclaim! , [45] Fact , [46] Pitchfork, [47] The Quietus , [48] Resident Advisor , [49] Stereogum , [50] The Wire , [51] and XLR8R . [52] Replica placed at number 35 on The Village Voice 's year-end Pazz & Jop critics' poll. [53] Pitchfork later included it at number 49 on their list of the 100 best albums of 2010–14. [54] Spin magazine ranked it number 235 on their list of "The 300 Best Albums of the Past 30 Years (1985–2014)". [55] In 2016, it was ranked at number 20 on Pitchfork's list of the 50 best ambient albums of all time. [56]
Publication/Author | Accolade | Rank |
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Clash | The Top 40 Albums of 2011 [43] | 21 |
Consequence of Sound | Top 50 Albums of 2011 [44] | 38 |
Exclaim! | 20 Best Dance & Electronic Albums of 2011 [45] | 4 |
Fact | The 50 Best Albums of 2011 [46] | 22 |
Pitchfork | Top 50 Albums of 2011 [47] | 6 |
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010–14) [54] | 49 | |
The 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time [56] | 20 | |
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s [57] | 49 | |
The Quietus | Albums of the Year 2011 [48] | 19 |
Resident Advisor | Top 20 Albums of 2011 [49] | 9 |
Spin | The 300 Best Albums of the Past 30 Years (1985–2014) [55] | 235 |
Stereogum | Top 50 Albums of 2011 [50] | 17 |
The Village Voice | Pazz and Jop 2011 [53] | 35 |
XLR8R | Best Releases of 2011 [52] | 8 |
The Wire | 2011 Rewind [51] | 14 |
All music is composed by Daniel Lopatin
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "Andro" | 3:56 |
2. | "Power of Persuasion" | 3:30 |
3. | "Sleep Dealer" | 3:10 |
4. | "Remember" | 3:19 |
5. | "Replica" | 4:36 |
6. | "Nassau" | 4:43 |
7. | "Submersible" | 3:49 |
8. | "Up" | 3:57 |
9. | "Child Soldier" | 3:12 |
10. | "Explain" | 6:45 |
Total length: | 40:54 |
Credits for Replica adapted from album liner notes. [58]
Chart (2013) | Peak position |
---|---|
US Heatseekers Albums (Billboard) [30] | 7 |
US Top Dance/Electronic Albums (Billboard) [29] | 10 |
Daniel Lopatin, best known as Oneohtrix Point Never or OPN, is an American experimental electronic music producer, composer, singer, and songwriter. His music has utilized tropes from various musical genres and eras, sample-based composition, and complex MIDI production.
Ford & Lopatin is an American electronic duo composed of musicians Daniel Lopatin and Joel Ford. The group's sound draws on disparate genres such as 1980s synthpop and MIDI-funk, chopped and screwed production, 1970s fusion, and techno. They have released a number of original recordings and remix mixtapes, including the 2011 album Channel Pressure.
Returnal is the fourth studio album by American electronic musician Daniel Lopatin under the alias Oneohtrix Point Never, released on June 22, 2010, by Mego. It develops the synthesizer-based compositions of Lopatin's previous work, while also incorporating elements of noise music and his own processed vocals. The album received positive reviews from critics, and was named among the best albums of 2010 by several publications, including Fact, The Wire, and Tiny Mix Tapes.
R Plus Seven is the sixth studio album by American electronic musician Oneohtrix Point Never, released on September 30, 2013, as his debut album on Warp Records. The album's musical palette draws heavily on the synthetic sounds of MIDI instruments, 1980s synth presets, and VSTs.
Channel Pressure is the debut studio album of electronic music duo Ford & Lopatin, consisting of producers Daniel Lopatin and Joel Ford. Following the group's abandonment of their previous name "Games" for legal reasons, they recorded the album at Gary's Electric Studios in Brooklyn, New York. It was released on June 7, 2011 as the first album to be issued on Software, Lopatin's own label under the Mexican Summer imprint.
That We Can Play is the debut EP of the American electronic-music project Games, consisting of producers Daniel Lopatin and Joel Ford. Lopatin and Ford produced That We Can Play in an apartment studio, using vintage synthesizers and sequencers to recapture the sound and style of 1980s power pop.
Garden of Delete is the seventh studio album by American electronic musician Oneohtrix Point Never, released on November 13, 2015 on Warp Records. The album—which critics regarded as being radically stylistically different from his previous releases—was preceded by an enigmatic Internet-based promotional campaign, and draws on musical influences such as grunge music, nu metal and popular electronic dance music, as well as themes of adolescence, mutation and abjection. It received generally positive critical reception and was included on year-end lists by several publications, including PopMatters, Fact and The Quietus.
Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1 is a 2010 album of remixes by American electronic musician Daniel Lopatin under the pseudonym Chuck Person. Its tracks consist of chopped, looped samples of various songs—including popular songs from the 1980s and 1990s—processed with effects such as delay, reverb, and pitch shifting; the results highlight mournful or existential moments from the sources. It was used as an initial template for the vaporwave internet microgenre.
Rifts is a 2009 compilation album by Oneohtrix Point Never, the solo alias of Brooklyn electronic musician Daniel Lopatin. The album collects Lopatin's early synth-based recordings under the moniker dating back to 2003, including the three limited-run LPs Betrayed in the Octagon (2007), Zones Without People (2009) and Russian Mind (2009), as well as several additional cassette and CD-R releases. It was originally released on No Fun Productions in 2009 as a 2 disc set.
Hopelessness is the debut solo album by British-American artist Anohni, frontwoman of Anohni and the Johnsons, released on 6 May 2016 on Secretly Canadian, Rough Trade, and Hostess. Featuring co-production by Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never, the album departs from the chamber pop style of her previous work, instead exploring an electronic sound and engaging directly with political and environmental themes in the form of protest songs.
Daniel Lopatin is a Brooklyn-based experimental musician who records primarily under the pseudonym Oneohtrix Point Never. Early in his career as both a solo artist and as a member of several groups, he released a number of LPs and extended plays on a variety of independent labels. In 2010, he signed to Editions Mego and released Returnal. In 2011, he founded the record label Software. In 2013, Lopatin signed to British electronic label Warp Records and released his label debut R Plus Seven.
Memory Vague is a 2009 audio-visual project by Oneohtrix Point Never, the alias of electronic musician Daniel Lopatin. It was released as a limited-edition DVD-R by Root Strata on June 1, 2009.
Reassemblage is the second studio album of Portland, Oregon duo Visible Cloaks, consisting of musicians Spencer Doran and Ryan Carlile. The record is named after Trinh T. Minh-ha's 1982 documentary film of the same name, since both works observe its subject matter without showing meaning to it. Reassemblage departs from Doran's past hip-hop releases for a more high-quality style inspired by the works of Japanese synthesizer music acts such as Yellow Magic Orchestra and Ryuichi Sakamoto, all of which were featured on Doran's 2010 mix Fairlights, Mallets & Bamboo.
Commissions I is a compilation extended play by American electronic musician Daniel Lopatin, known by his stage name Oneohtrix Point Never. It was released as a limited 12" vinyl edition of 1,000 copies on Record Store Day 2014 by the English label Warp. It is a collection of three tracks Lopatin commissioned for art pieces, films and live performance events: "Music for Steamed Rocks," "Meet Your Creator," and "I Only Have Eyes For You." These commissions were mixed and engineered for the EP by Paul Corley and mastered by Valgeir Sigurðsson. The record was well received by music journalists, landing at number nine on a list of the best EPs of 2014 by Pretty Much Amazing.
Music For Reliquary House / In 1980 I Was A Blue Square is a split album by American electronic musician Daniel Lopatin, known by his stage name Oneohtrix Point Never, and Rene Hell, the project of American electronic music artist Jeff Witscher. It showcases Lopatin's and Witscher's shift from the style of their early synthesizer-heavy recordings to electroacoustic music. The split album was released by NNA Tapes on September 17, 2012 to favorable opinions from professional reviewers.
Good Time (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is a soundtrack album by American electronic musician Oneohtrix Point Never, containing the score for the Safdie brothers' 2017 film Good Time. It was released on August 10, 2017 via Warp Records.
Age Of is the eighth studio album by American electronic producer Oneohtrix Point Never, released on June 1, 2018, on Warp Records. Recorded over two years, it is the first Oneohtrix Point Never album to prominently feature Daniel Lopatin's own vocals. The album was accompanied by the MYRIAD tour, which premiered as a "conceptual concertscape" in 2018 at the Park Avenue Armory and ended its run in 2019.
"The Station" is a song by American electronic producer and singer-songwriter Oneohtrix Point Never from his eighth studio album, Age Of.
Magic Oneohtrix Point Never is the ninth studio album by American electronic producer Daniel Lopatin, under his alias Oneohtrix Point Never, released on October 30, 2020, via Warp. The album draws on a psychedelic radio aesthetic strongly inspired by Magic 106.7, the mondegreen namesake of Lopatin's project, and was recorded during COVID-19 lockdowns, between March and July 2020.
Zones Without People is the second studio album by American electronic musician Daniel Lopatin, known by the name Oneohtrix Point Never. It was released on August 6, 2009 via Arbor as a limited-run LP. Most of the material on the album also appeared on the 2009 compilation album Rifts. The other albums in the Rifts trilogy are Betrayed In The Octagon and Russian Mind, released in 2007 and 2009 respectively.
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