Oneohtrix Point Never @ The Brudenell Social Club (Leeds)
Tuesday 13th December 2011 | Osh
Daniel Lopatin brings his Detroit infused ambient synth stylings to the north of England...
It was clear from the start that this wasn’t going to be your average gig. The audience are the same kind of kids you find at certain house and techno nights, passionate about music to the point that it becomes charmingly geeky. The difference here is that everyone is sitting cross-legged on the floor. Lopatin is sat behind a desk with his visual artist and for a while it seems the audience is unsure whether he has begun or not. It becomes apparent that he has as the twinkling bleeps from the system evolve into lush ambient soundscapes, half drone half chord, while a graphic design of something that looks like an early camera-phone flickers in the background. The overall feeling for the first half of the performance is that we have arrived at the modern equivalent of a 1970’s happening. As geometric images vibrate on the screen behind, Lopatin dishes out a wall of sound from his back catalogue. Then the mournful piano of his new album’s title track ‘Replica’ rises like a statue of melancholia above the noise and the audience knows Oneohtrix Point Never has arrived for real. He doesn’t strictly play songs as they come on the album, at least not structurally speaking, Rather he mixes and matches from a number of different areas. The nasal sounds that open the ‘Nassau’ fall away into the chopped samples and lounge jazz flute of ‘Sleep Dealer’ with out a break in sound. It is a sonic experience unlike many we have experienced before. It seemed organic, as if the music were autonomous and when its all over the silence is uncomfortably noticeable.