Oneohtrix Point Never — Returnal
Unlike so much synthesizer dominated ambient music, it is immediate, a shimmering sheet of sequenced synth that sits front and center in the mix. Most ambient music I encounter these days is muddy, indistinct murmering, in which nothing comes clearly to the fore, and anything could be hidden behind the billowing, hazy clouds of sound. Oneohtrix Point Never takes the thoughtful zen of artists like Steve Roach and puts it a more thoughtful, structured package, with all the fat trimmed off. In fact, so much is stripped away that some songs ("Describing Bodies") are left without a single memorable element. The sound itself is still quite beautiful.
The euphoric gust of opener and lone noise track, "Nil Admirari", is a strange kink in the otherwise well-conceived thematic progression of the album. It's hard to know what purpose this track is meant to serve in context of the album. Placing something like this at the beginning the record is a track sequencing move that will likely drive away most of the intended audience of this recording. Afterall, ambient music often functions as a method of focusing the mind and warding off chaos of just this variety. There are forms of ambient that border on noise (dark ambient, industrial ambient), but the other 7 tracks on "Returnal" surely do not belong to these subgenres - not a single abrasive texture is to be found. As a fan of both noise and ambient styles, I am still taken aback by the sheer volume and power of this opener in relation to the rest of the album. I enjoy the track very much in isolation, especially the part where Lopatin bends a loop of a desperate yell ("Aaaaaaugh!") into a hypnotic pulsation. It's also a fantastic example of a noise composition that successfully integrates tonal elements, but it's ultimately hard to enjoy in context.
Lopatin attempts a smooth fade from noise into drone, but they still end up feeling like utterly separate worlds. Once we're all the way into "Describing Bodies", we're comfortable again. This song is a single, shimmering synth chord sustained for 4 minutes. It usually passes before I realize it's begun, but if I focus on it, there's remarkable depth. Nostalgic ghost notes and understated countermelodies flicker through the drone. Over the course of the next few tracks, it's easy to forget the jarring discontinuity of the opening of the album and enjoy the refreshing, fluid, avian beauty of the remainder of the album, which seems to have been wholly constructed with the same synthesizer as used in "Describing Bodies".
Continuing on, third track "Stress Waves" seems very much like a sister piece to "Describing Bodies". The chordal drone becomes a blissful progression and a percolating carpet of distant synth blips bobs gently on the horizon. It's like sunlight glistening on the ocean.
The first time the album really grabs my attention after "Nil Admirari" is "Returnal", the title track, which stands out immediately due to the inclusion of prominent vocals. The vocals have been heavily processed, but it's more of a cheap pitch-shifter guitar pedal sound than anything close to the complex timbres produced by vocoders. They are the thin, insubstantial voice of an elemental air spirit. The lyrics are close to distinguishable, but not quite; to my mind, that's a good thing. There's some real songwriting here in the structure of the vocal melody, and the way it is, you could project nearly any emotion onto the oddly poignant melody, a melody that is certainly one of those that stays with you, one of those that speaks to so many facets of the universal experience, the continuous life.
The latter half of the album contains no surprises, but some very solid compositions. "Pelham Island Road" is somewhat denser in sound than the rest of the record, and ends up similar to frequent Steve Roach collaborator Vidna Obmana, an artist who also aims for a purer distillation of Roach styled synthscapes. The primary differences are firstly an added sharpness to the sound of the synths, and secondly the fact that there are no tribal or shamanic elements on "Returnal"; we're too far above ground for all that. "Where Does Time Go" appropriately hangs nearly still in space, creating the illusion of suspended time, and reminding me of the sublime and forested audio worlds of Wolfgang Voigt's "Gas" project. The shorter "Ouroboros" has the youthful 'coming home to your room after school' innocence of certain Aphex Twin and Mike Paradinas tracks, as well as some of the degraded warmth of William Basinski's "Disintegration Tapes" series.
Closer "Preyouandi" stands out as easily the most organic track on the album, a soupy mess of pitchshifted vocals and arrhythmic drum machines (think Ikue Mori) delayed and delayed again until only a vaguely melodic cloud of percussive echoes remains. Nostalgic reprisals of the "Returnal" title track melody crop up near the end, and without the vibrant synth work from that track to accompany it, this melody comes across as significantly less dramatic. Instead, it is mystic and meditative. The delay patterns nearly fool the mind into thinking that these sounds are resonating in an elaborate cave, full of odd curves and reflective surfaces. It's a great song that ties up the album well.
The bottom line is that Oneohtrix Point Never has made a solid ambient record with "Returnal", though parts, particularly near the beginning, are disjointed, while others are forgettable or repetitive. Lopatin's best work is likely still ahead of him. He has yet to achieve the perfect control over the ebb and flow of the sound that true ambient masters display in their work. Certain elements are handled with marvellous finesse, while others are neglected. The album is full of lovely sound, but Lopatin struggles to develop his pieces, which float aimlessly through their running times and often end with the same exact chord progression and timbral qualities they began with. However, it's also arguably true that his apparent youthfulness is what sets this album apart from the hundreds of more polished albums of murky synth drift, and brings a little immediacy back to the ambient music genre.