Oneothrix Point Never - R Plus Seven
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| Oneothrix Point Never - R Plus Seven |
Out of many
writings about the artwork and installations of Murata, the best term to
describe his work and to put it into context with R Plus Seven must be something close to `digital vanitas images´.
Just like the art movement in baroque times, artists would take various objects
and put them in context of worldly existence, death, decay and eternity. While formerly
this would include burning candles, wilting flowers, human skulls and even
instruments paired together on canvases, Murata brought this idea into
the digital realm of the new centuries: Now even the images are eternalized digital
code and the objects carrying the symbolic value of vanity have turned into modulated
figurines like a broken IPhone, metallic bananas or music instruments made out
of gum. Also the titles have changed from being as meaningful as `L'Allegoria
della vita umana´ (Allegory of Human Life) to quoting something irrelevant like `Get Your Ass To The
Moon´ (apparently from `Total Recall´). In all of this, may it be a
notion of vanitas or anti-vanitas of the digital age, the music of Lopatin
seems almost symbiotically intertwined.
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| Guido Cagnacci - L´Allegoria della vita umana |
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| Takeshi Murata - Golden Banana |
R Plus Seven with its deceptively short 43 minutes reads
like the schizophrenic cadre of everything Internet, everything that seems to shout out it´s artificiality to the point of either discarding it as thrash or of
contemplating the higher sense laying beneath. And yet, when one starts the machines
of R Plus Seven with “Boring Angels”, what hits resembles the warmth of an church organ so closely that everything said
before is thrown into perspective of the artificial imitating the natural so
closely, the original might never be needed again. When the synths and the
cartoonish sounds hit linear comprehension will black out until the circular repetition of the churchly organs. It somehow feels like Lopatin is messing with the most revered of
musical traditions, pushing his mark of synth ridden space thump into the mix to
elevate the boredom of those with short attention spans. This multi-layered and
multi-sequenced conduct carries through the whole of R Plus Seven like an motif in itself. For example following track “Americans”
starts off as a stroll through jungle wonderland with playful and beautiful
sounds and strings blending together, ascending into a spacey crashing of noise
and little gremlins giggling only to change to ethereal voices which yet again circularly
segue into jungle wonderland again. One the first listen I personally thought I
went through three different tracks only to look at the player to see that
Lopatin managed to pull this off in five short minutes.
As some,
especially with the shorter tracks like “He She” or “Cryo”, might feel like the
changes occur to rapidly and some portions might have deserved to be fleshed
out even more or be longer in general, the pacing adds to the experience of the
vast digital empire we dwell in and the seamless blending – even when
interrupted with starts and stop like a loading circle popping up – never
gives room to tedium or to be entirely sure of what is occurring right
now. This may, as with his previous work Replica, lead to a dismissing of this record as senseless mish-mash
but this arguably just means that one should listen over and over again
to get a sense of direction and destination. And I can say, maybe thirty
listens in, this record never fails to captivate the attentive or even distracted
listener.
Microcosmic
tracks like “Problem Areas” slow down to a fusion of nocturnal sounds and
voices just to jump into tattered EDM piece “Zebra” with its fast paced beat
and crystal like tones in return evolving into ambient glitches laced with
brass cadences. While “Problem Areas” might be the most concise track to the whole
concept of the album, second to last track “Still Life” is the most
awe-inspiring of them all. Not only for its especially mysterious opening, desolate
midsection and factory-rave like crescendo, but for its visual accompaniment:
The video for “Still Life” subtitled `Betamale´ is a collage of seedy
computer `desks´, graphic hentai and fetish imagery and appears to be a
horrific glimpse into the depths in and around the Internet. Additional there is a
narrating voice of a woman putting the images into context with the loss of
imagination and the possible deceptive look `into the screen for a
glimpse of eternity´.
Overall the
body of work presented in R Plus Seven often gives you the experience of
surfing the Internet – having opened multiple tabs, in the matter of seconds
switching from reading an news report of a tragic incident, to watching your
favorite cartoons moments on YouTube or texting with someone you could easily
meet face to face via your social wormhole of choice. Referring back to
Muratas work, Daniel Lopatin has crafted what seems to be the aural equivalent
of the digital world we live in (with Replica maybe being the fictional Television
preface of what was to come here). The idea of vanity, be it the decay of our
communication, creative power or the way we are transfixed with every little
piece of information known to men, seems to be present at all times. Only two
things remain: The strikingly beautiful expression this record still poses with
it´s angelic qualities and the recipient himself trying to
figure out what is to be made of it. As put in “Still Life (Betamale)” we are
still able to see every detail of this world we experience, but can´t seem to
grasp the meaning of it.
This record
might be one of the best examples of visuals marrying the pure aural
experiences to something greater and delving into R Plus Seven can be as mind boggling
as it is rewarding. (And I´m still trying to figure out if what the album
artwork is all about...)
10 / 10
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