Oneohtrix Point Never – Problem Areas

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER – AKA cerebral analogue sound sculptor Daniel Lopatin – releases his absorbing new album R Plus Seven on September 30. By way of a taster comes this outstanding track. Commencing in pristine, systems music style, Problem Areas’ near mathematical synthetic continuum is suddenly suspended and held in sub-aqua, churchical stasis (“Wait” advises a woman’s voice, clearly), whereupon the mesmeric main theme resumes.

It’s accompanied by this calmly surrealist film, involving the digital imaginings of artist Takeshi Murata. Computer-generated still life assemblages of items including a dart board, horror VHS tapes and polystyrene pringles – first seen at his Synthesizers show in New York late last year – it makes for a double dose of psychotropic amusement. Or as Lopatin has it, “I wanted to characterize a linear world with cracks in its edifice.”