Review: Oneohtrix Point Never – Replica
Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica (2011) [Software/Mexican Summer] // Grade: A
Replica hypnotizes, like a television in the dark. It emanates from warm, flickering cathode, lopes and stutters through a song cycle built of lo-fi television advertisements, lures you in like the constant static from Poltergeist. If Rifts and Returnal were the outer edges of Eno’s Apollo Moon — or the sunset-tinted closing scene from George Lucas’ THX1138 – Replica is Poltergeist’s rapt little Carol Anne, drawn to the screen by all those malevolent apparitions.
And though this full-length is definitely creepier, more lurching in structure, than its two predecessors, it’s lost none of Oneohtrix’s characteristic texture. Daniel Lopatin’s taken a cue from musique concrete here: Mining a set of source materials — in Replica’s case, the aforementioned ad samples — to uncover the acoustics hidden in their upbeats. And the resulting sounds are lovely, in context or out: Twinkling pianos, rich and sliced-up voiceovers, a dozen oohs, aahs and hahs glittering beneath Lopatin’s surging bass and dreamscape synths. Like Matmos’ A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure, Replica is just as enjoyable if you don’t know what those samples are, but once you know — once you realize that Matmos’ “Lipostudio…And So On” is actually a recorded liposuction and Oneohtrix’s “Sleep Dealer” is likely one of those soda commercials we know from so many Saturday mornings spent glued to cartoons — the experience changes entirely. It becomes a visceral trip down memory lane; even when they’re mutilated, the warm familiarity of those ads nips at your subconscious.
Couple that familiarity with Lopatin’s penchant for atmosphere, the way his songs move from ocean to air to space and beyond, and you’ve got an album remarkable for the way it draws you in. Even while its tracks meander and side-step, repeat and repeat and repeat then skitter off somewhere else entirely, Replica is pure hypnosis. The ultimate cathode mind-control calling “Carol Anne…Carol Anne” across wires and static and so much flickering eeriness.
