Oneohtrix Point Never - R Plus Seven

that's one of the weirdest videos I've ever seen

  On 12/6/2013 at 9:08 PM, Ceerial said:

lolwat?

lol @ saying 'bad things' about it without having heard it, obviously. I thought that would go without saying. Don't get me wrong though. Changing your mind and being honest about it is one of the coolest things you can do in my book, and happens far too rarely on internet forums.

I think that super edgy Still Life vid turned a lot of people off which is a shame. Glad I gave it a chance even though I had my doubts.

i just gave this another listen on headphones, with mellow moody lighting. first off, chrome country is possibly the worst ending to an album with which i am familiar and getting to the end of that track was an exercise of sheer will to see it through. fuck that track.

i think what really troubles me about this record is how homogenous it is, perhaps even one-dimensional. if you listen to the first half dozen minutes or so you'll hear basically the entire variety of sounds on the whole record. in principle this does not bother me but for some reason i just don't think he quite pulls it off.

each track basically has the same sound pallet which is some combination of granular-type vocal fragments, general midi sounds (often providing the rhythmic-arpeggio element), synth vox chords, cut up vaporwave style samples, etc. then, it sounds like there is one reverb send on every single track.

additionally, there seem to be a number of very blatant references to other music: within the first several minutes there's clearly a philip glass arpeggio going into a steve reich mallet style arpeggio. there's also some obvious new age references, especially some of the midi piano riffs and the windham hill sample -- btw that label put out some mark isham records, notably "vapor drawings" and "film music" which are reminiscent of some of the softer side of r +7, not to mention film music has a notably similar cover: http://www.discogs.com/Mark-Isham-Film-Music/release/1216902.

presumably all this is entirely deliberate on lopatin's part and i do appreciate the concentration and focus of the project, as well as lopatin's ability to do adhere to certain vaporwave clichés while simultaneously doing something quite original with them. i suppose in the end, for me personally the music just doesn't go anywhere. the formula (fast midi sounds with tiny vocal fragments and granular samples suddenly giving way to lush synth vox. repeat.) sometimes achieves lush moments but overall i find it a bit annoying and at times really unimaginative. indeed, when "along" kicked in and those granular rythms were heard, even though they were so distant and washed in reverb i was still like "fuck me not this again." and really the album kind of loses its way in the last couple tracks, with chrome country pushing the limits of his particular aesthetic beyond taste into self-parody. that's cool when some one like philip glass does it (like the end of music in 12 parts) but the end of r + 7 is actually the most glaring example of the album's weaknesses imo.

anyway, i find the record rather fascinating in some respects and i am intrigued by lopatin's experimental pursuits here. but overall i find the album way too repetitive, to the point where i really am tempted to consider it one dimensional. and I really can't think of any particular cluster of sounds, let alone whole tracks that i am genuinely moved by.

cool story bro/10

i've come around to the idea that this album could be the sketch for an album of actual fully realized, emotionally resonant music. for now it just feels like a treatment or an outline.

it might be my biggest disappointment of the year behind monomania.

To me this album sounds 1000x more complete than anything else he's done. Doesn't sound like a framework in any way. I guess saying that it's one dimensional makes sense in a way, but I'd say that it's less that the album is one dimensional than it is experimenting with a certain type of sound. I could say that Splazsh by Actress is one dimensional because the whole thing sounds like it was put through the same grain filter, but that's sort of the point. Also, I've heard little that sounds like this album, even among 80s synth experiments and Phillip Glass and the like. Maybe I just haven't heard enough of it, but even considering the sonic similarities the arrangement of it is very different, much more fragmented. Opinions.

agree, it feels like he's got a very well defined vision for this album and he achieves what he wanted to achieve to the fullest. i generally can't stand most of this nostalgia-wavecore revival stuff but he does something very original with familiar tools. i don't understand the point of seeking emotional resonance in this album when it's clear that he isn't interested in it, at least not in the same way as on rifts.

i mean how emotionally resonant can cgi oranges be.

  On 12/8/2013 at 2:51 PM, eugene said:

i mean how emotionally resonant can cgi oranges be.

this one resonates a lot of cool emotions

I feel

  On 12/8/2013 at 3:10 PM, Salvatorin said:

I feel

you're an exception, most people don't perceive the world in 4 bits without dithering.

wow 46 pages about this album...... it's a good album & like the terry riley vibes throughout, but i keep going back to his double album 'rifts' more, find it more complex & more in depth....zones without people is amazing

Morph & Iggy Pop stomach hybrid deluxe is relevant to any topic of conversation!

  On 12/8/2013 at 2:51 PM, eugene said:

i mean how emotionally resonant can cgi oranges be.

extremely thats the whole point m8

  On 12/8/2013 at 3:40 PM, pyramidpanes said:

wow 46 pages about this album...... it's a good album & like the terry riley vibes throughout, but i keep going back to his double album 'rifts' more, find it more complex & more in depth....zones without people is amazing

Oh man nothing can replace Rifts. Definitely still my favorite work by him.

And yeah, r+7 is emotional, but not in the same cathartic way Rifts is. Although, I can def find lots of emotion in CGI oranges.

all things are all things etc

one other observation i'd like to share...

the entire album seems to take place on a singular sonic field, as though all the sounds are displayed on a flat surface. the use of reverb, which i think is kind of bland, seems to only reinforce this perception for me. again, i think this is intentional but it really does contribute to my feelings of impatience about the record. it's like each song is comprised of these exceptionally distinct fragments, from individual sounds to the little structural clusters that comprise each track. it's like: here is the midi piano, right here is the vaporwave samples, over here we have the reverby synth vox, and so on with the movements having a similarly disconnected and distinct quality. this is interesting in some sense but after a few instances of this i find myself feeling impatient and disinterested and as the album progresses i can't shake the nagging feeling that he blows his load right off the bat and there's really nothing further to expect from the rest of the record. this may in fact explain the slight departure from the formula which takes place at the end with the introduction of new synth tropes and sentimental chords and melodies.

in contrast, straight after the album ended last night i through on fsol "environments 2" which happened to be sitting by. i felt i needed something lush after the coldness of r+7. i was immediately struck by some of the sonic similarities (synth vox, generic sounding instruments, etc) but was far more moved by the depth of the fsol tracks. unlike r+7 there seemed to be a variety of layers of reverb which deepened the space of the music. sounds flowed through the piece in a much more fluid and organic way, with such subtlety that i often didn't at first notice when certain things had disappeared from the mix or when one sound gave way to another. the whole flow between musical elements and sound design and more "sound effects" type stuff was way more interesting and stimulating to me.

i am not by any means making the comparison to illustrate how lopatin failed to do something fsol spwas successful in achieving. i think lopatin's intentions were probably completely different from fsol, however, i find the later way more interesting and rewarding personally.

  On 12/8/2013 at 7:58 PM, Alcofribas said:

it's like each song is comprised of these exceptionally distinct fragments, from individual sounds to the little structural clusters that comprise each track. it's like: here is the midi piano, right here is the vaporwave samples, over here we have the reverby synth vox, and so on with the movements having a similarly disconnected and distinct quality. this is interesting in some sense but after a few instances of this i find myself feeling impatient and disinterested and as the album progresses i can't shake the nagging feeling that he blows his load right off the bat and there's really nothing further to expect from the rest of the record.

Oh man, we are on completely different wavelengths then, because that is literally my favorite part. If he had "developed" these ideas further than the fragments it would have ruined the record for me.

okay alco

okay gmanyo

I love y'all.

but,

I posted a giant dick in this thread before

I'll do it again if I have to

like, I don't care if the fragments would be short, or long, or like whatever.

I don't even notice that they are so called 'cheesy' roland d50 presets.

like, I seriously don't even fuckin register the 'cheese'.

like, I'm beyond that, bro.

like, I just hear sounds, man.

and I, like, like them.

last post.

lol not really tho

So this last post is what more or less david told me there was in the forum

(sent from my not-Apple device using Talk That Talk Deluxe Edition)

fuck man I jus realized that 'along' is eq'd way too bassy, ouch my ears

0.56/10

  On 11/15/2013 at 9:28 PM, eugene said:

dunno, i kinda like some of its parameters.

lel