Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica (2011), 9/10

Replica was Lopatin's first album to be recorded in an actual studio, and among his first real experimental feats. Knowing what was involved in the inception of the album, one may expect a nonsensical disaster at worst or drudgery at best, but Daniel Lopatin's surreal, melancholic, avante-garde sampling experiment is stunningly beautiful. Up until this point, OPN was a synth-heavy project with albums like Zones Without People and Russian Mind showing great songwriting skill/promise as an artist, but the project was also limited by ambient synth ideals. Replica, on the other hand, breaks free via the completely unconventional 80s and 90s television advertisement samples. "Andro" is a perfect opener in that it sets the stage for Replica's formula, but also offers a high energy introduction before some of the slower paced tracks. The tone and title of "Submersible" are apt and quaint; the track does a great job of making us feel submerged in the soundscapes surrounding its melodies. Submersion is certainly a trope that is appropriate for any portion of the album, although here it is especially potent and focused. There is perhaps no more poetic or beautiful closer than "Explain" for this particular record, and it elevates the whole experience to another plane of pleasure. The outstanding album cover originates in a Virgil Finlay illustration Loot of the Vampire within the pulp fiction magazine Weird Tales. This accentuates the album's tone of disturbing pulchritude, which is equally and admirably consistent, particularly considering the sheer range of samples, yet laser focused approach. The adage holds true that restrictions can yield the greatest art, just as chiptune can yield significant beauty, so can glitchy, heavily sample-based ambient synth. There is a certain, uncommonly specific feeling that emanates from these songs, flowing perfectly from one to the next, not only beckoning back to a particular time and place, but providing an obscured image of an infinite joie de vivre. The songs themselves are autonomous and self-reliant in a fashion providing meaning in and of themselves, yet together they create an opulent product of titillation and nuanced significance. Walter Benjamin said "technical reproduction reached a standard that not only permitted it to reproduce all transmitted works of art and thus to cause the most profound change in their impact upon the public; it also had captured a place of its own among the artistic processes". This is what Lopatin accomplished and proved masterfully artistic with this iteration of his thematic Replica. Undoubtedly one of the greatest electronic recordings of our time and a one-of-a-kind experience of distinctive, lush, digital delectation.