Home Again
Oneohtrix Point Never brings the light and sound to Royale on Sunday, 28 April 2024.
Pedagogy opens with a two-man ambient bubblebath of percussion and guitar from the dark side of the m00n.
Everyone’s from Brookline!
Here’s a factoid: Daniel Lopatin, the man behind the moniker Oneohtrix Point Never, grew up in Brookline (one or both of the musicians from Pedagogy too). At least at some point in childhood? So he said at the Royale show on Sunday.
An undated Fader piece claims he’s from Winthrop, MA.
Both can be true. Is Lopatin’s history of childhood homes really at the top of the list of things you're interested in about the artist? You usually got to be a more “historical” figure in arts & culture before Wikipedia, for example, starts caring about where you grew up. Or you have to have some awful and/or salacious backstory that makes the details relevant.
Dozens of impactful releases into his career, signed to a prestige major indie label, with a growing sideline in film scoring, Lopatin is doing as well as electronic music artists ever do in pop music these days, barring the gonzo mega DJ acts like Diplo, or David Guetta, or other acts that you probably don’t follow but continue to pack crowds who don’t ultimately like music into outdoor festivals and the type of clubs where you need a clear plastic purse to hold all your essentials so they know you’re not toting a gun.
Oh shit, he’s a Hampshire alum, class of ‘00! I would’ve been a year behind him – if you’re reading this Lopatin, let’s do a deep dive Hampshire College interview!
Pedagogy
Pedagogy is a two-piece ambient combo by Nate Boyce (guitar) and Eli Keszler (percussion). Looks like Boyce also creates and collaborates on some of the visual effects and stage show, including the EDM concert microcosm and the digital animations.
The pair whipped up a moony, moody soundscape that felt like the kind of guitar-driven gateway drug that people who grew up with rock music dabble in before taking the leap to electronic music. An atmospheric style of drumming, bordering at times on aleatoric adventurism, opened up the tracks.
The guitar work channeled the compositions into more familiar paths, which, however far you stretched the elastic, still sound like a blues-based rock n roll vision. And there’s not a goddamn thing wrong with that.
Oneohtrix Point Never
Touring on the new album, Oneohtrix Point Never brought the Again show to Royale.
The venue has the charm of a post revolution Versaille, with a sweeping staircase leading up to the main hall, decorative moulding, gilded mirrors, chandeliers, disoriented youth, and, presumably, rats scurrying about where darkness reigns.
Live electronic music can be a dull affair, if you’re (really) old school, when the simple pleasure of mapping bleeps and bloops through silicon transistors was excitement enough.
Or you can dial up the presentation to 11, serving up a sensory overload of light and atmospheric effects to make up for the fact that, you know, nobody’s on stage making sweet, sweet love to their ax in a demonstrably physical way. Button- and dial-commandos just don’t quicken the pulse like a good lightshow or dance troupe.
Oneohtrix Point Never split the difference, providing a lightshow in keeping with his general visual aesthetic: coder glambient pop. The effects were not calculated to bludgeon the senses.
Instead, the presentation left you with enough wits to register the unfolding mini-drama of the pint-sized EDM concert set up in a doll house manner at the front of the stage, filmed, and blasted onto the background screen at key moments in the set. A little Ken-sized Daniel Lopatin crashed the 1s and 2s of a mini-turntable on a tiny stage complete with overhead stage lights and smoke machine.
Some people would ask ‘why.’ I say, ‘why not.’ I literally just said ‘why not’ as I wrote out this sentence. Now you know.
Photo Gallery
Sonic Youth knew how to massage the feedback.