Oneohtrix Point Never – Tranquilizer
Whether microsampling from contemporaneous sources or just pushing the right keys to get the right sounds echoing the right decade of synthesizer, Daniel Lopatin as Oneohtrix Point Never has been at the forefront of the vaporwave genre for years, and by extension all of electronica. His new album Tranquilizer continues this run with music that skillfully teeters on the verge of multiple adjacent styles but never quite falls headlong into any.
In this round of OPN’s ongoing fight with/for technology, Lopatin found inspiration in sample libraries he realized had been deleted from the Internet Archive. Oneohtrix rescued, recreated, and reimagined some of these ‘90s-era clips across Tranquilizer, developing a set of music that pays homage to their own sources from years prior as well as to what they became in their moment. All this, and then it gets run through a devilish array of modern processing. It’s a snapshot of mid-1980s to mid-1990s sonic pop culture, smudged like a Peter Gabriel Polaroid.
In “Waterfalls” we hear callbacks to the soundtracks of 1980s coming-of-age films and slick crime dramas, all layered atop one another. OPN references ambient dub and modern space music throughout Tranquilizer—its weird choral atmospheres and murmured monologues, its distinctive samples of squeaking sea life and squishy passing stars. There are echoes of the last gasps of greatness of turn-of-the-decade Pink Floyd in the guitar figures peeking through “For Residue” and “Fear of Symmetry.” That latter track also reinforces the glitch movement born with Oval, alongside songs like “Vestigel.”
I’m amazed by two particular techniques on Tranquilizer. First, Oneohtrix Point Never music is rarely comfortable or comforting, but here the sonic fuckery is never truly irritating. In tracks like the xylophone hyperpop of “Storm Show” you can still identify pop constructs—breakdown, bridge, repeated motifs—even as algorithms and fingers interrupt the progress with digital effects and samples to send your ears on side quests. Second, and more shocking, is how Lopatin pulls this off with barely any proper rhythm parts. Yes, you’ll hear a bass or drum line occasionally, but in a song like “Measuring Ruins” they dip in and out of existence before fully materializing as the beating wings of hummingbirds and pterodactyls. More likely, it’s clipped and glitched keyboards, and triggers of guitars and other samples, whose harsh-edged attacks keep time in “Cherry Blue” and elsewhere.
Tranquilizer may contain the past, but it reinforces that Oneohtrix Point Never is the future of the future. This is prog that isn’t prog, techno with almost nothing driving its BPM, feeling like spa music designed to rile you up instead of calm you down. In short, this is the most smartly paradoxical music of Daniel Lopatin’s career, and some of the most engaging.
Label: Warp
Year: 2025
Similar Albums:
Oneohtrix Point Never : Tranquilizer
Note: When you buy something through our affiliate links, Treble receives a commission. All albums we cover are chosen by our editors and contributors.
