Review: Oneohtrix Point Never – Zones Without People
Oneohtrix Point Never - Zones Without People (2009) [Arbor] // Grade: A
In keeping with my All Things Eno(ish) Friday, here’s another awesome space jam: Brooklyn’s Daniel Lopatin on a serious Apollo Moon kick. I’m not sure I can accurately describe how amazing this album is without resorting to cheap phrases like, I don’t know, “space jam”, but suffice to say this: I listened to Zones Without People four times back to back without once feeling anything but pure adoration. It’s an acquired taste for sure—all relaxing analogue arpeggios and hypnotic loops, no percussion—but anyone with an affinity for Eno’s rambling atmospheric work (plus the music of any and all documentaries about the ocean and/or spacetime) will love this.
Zones Without People—and pretty much all Oneohtrix Point Never—can ultimately be boiled down to a single cultural touchpoint: the final scene of George Lucas’ THX1138, when the title character emerges from the tunnels into a blinding, bird-filled sunset. Lopatin’s balance of the organic with the robotic brilliantly suggests that contradiction—and, within it, the sense that the latter could not exist without the former. Without the babbling brook and chirping birds of “Format & Journey North”, say, a full-on future track like “Computer Vision” wouldn’t be nearly as emotive. And “Zones Without People”—a melodic, lovelorn and stunningly constant android loop—would float off into nothingness without the opening lion’s roar to ground it. It’s all part of one panoramic whole: space, earth and who knows what else.
Lopatin might be a little more machine than man, though; this guy is stacking releases like you wouldn’t believe. On top of Zones Without People, he’s got the Russian Mind LP and two-disc Rifts (a collection of his first three full-lengths) dropping on No Fun this month alone. Great news for science-and-audio nerds like me who wish the entire world could sound like a Carl Sagan documentary. Or an Eno soundtrack. Either way.
