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Garden of Delete

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Untitled

Garden of Delete is the eighth studio album by Oneohtrix Point Never (the recording alias of American musician Daniel Lopatin), released on 13 November 2015. It is his second full-length release on Warp Records.[3]

Background and recording

Following the 2013 release of R Plus Seven and work on several side projects, Lopatin was unexpectedly invited to support Nine Inch Nails and Soundgarden on their 2014 Live Nation tour as a replacement for Death Grips.[4][5] With the assent of NIN frontman Trent Reznor, Lopatin performed 30-minute opening sets of self-described "hard rock cyberdrone" to often vexed crowds. The tour prompted him to reengage with music from his adolescence, primarily the misanthropic guitar music heavily marketed to his age group during the 1990s:[6]

I was thinking about puberty a lot. I was born in ’82, so when I was listening to Soundgarden’s Superunknown, it pretty much perfectly lined up with my acne breakout, hair growing on my face – all of that shit. Garden of Delete’s a bit of a memoir, in a way. I used whatever memories I have left of puberty – which isn’t a lot – and what I realised is that most of the memories I do have from that time in my life are pretty traumatic.[4]

Upon the completion of the tour, Lopatin returned to Brooklyn, rented a small, windowless basement studio, and began recording new material in isolation.[7][8] In addition to his experiences touring, he has also cited French philosopher Julia Kristeva (in particular, her theory of abjection) and video hosting service Vevo as inspirations for the recording.[9]

The album has been described as abrasive and dense relative to OPN's recent releases,[6] with Lopatin himself stating that "I was making pretty aggressive, nihilistic stuff early on and kind of went away from that for a bit. In some ways I feel like I’m back now."[4] The album's sonic pallet draws on the "cool, frictionless pads, airy choral presets, and [...] synthesized sounds"[10] of R Plus Seven in addition to metal, top 40 radio, rock, contemporary EDM, trance, and industrial music.[11][9] The album's vocals were rendered using the software instrument Chipspeech, which allowed Lopatin to write text and play it chromatically.[9]

The track "Child of Rage" contains a sample of an interview from the 1990 HBO documentary Child of Rage: A Story of Abuse. "ECCOJAMC1" contains a sample of "Solid Air" by John Martyn, "Freaky Eyes" samples a portion of "Am I Supposed to Let It by Again (Above the Covers)" by Roger Rodier, and "No Good" contains a sample of "Return of the Knodler Show" by Hans Reichel.

Promotion and release

The release of Garden of Delete was preceded by a enigmatic promotional campaign, carried out by Lopatin with the help of friends and collaborators.[9][10][12] The album was announced in August 2015 via a series of internet posts originating from Lopatin's website, including a cryptic PDF letter to his fans, a blog interview with a mysterious alien teenager named Ezra, and a website attributed to fictional lost "hypergrunge" band Kaoss Edge.[13][14] Over subsequent days and weeks, related Twitter accounts, hidden MIDI recordings, videos, and labyrinthine blogspots (with posts dating back as far as 1994) emerged, corroborating a loose fictional backstory that would serve as a backdrop for the album.[10][15]

The album's first single, "I Bite Through It," was released on September 3, 2015, and was followed later that month with the release of the album's MIDI files, with Lopatin encouraging fans to create their own songs from the material.[16][17][18] Second single "Mutant Standard" was released on October 21.[19] "Sticky Drama" was released on November 4, and accompanied by a two-part music video directed by Jon Rafman.[20]

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
Metacritic81/100[21]
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[22]
Consequence of Sound(A-)[23]
Exclaim!9/10[24]
The Line of Best Fit8.5/10[25]
Mojo[21]
Pitchfork Media8.7/10[26]
PopMatters7/10[27]
Tiny Mix Tapes[28]
Uncut[21]
Under the Radar8/10[29]

Garden of Delete received general acclaim from critics. Writing for Pitchfork, Philip Sherborne described the album as "absolutely gripping—strange, moving, hilarious, sometimes pushing the limits of good taste," adding that, "this time out, [Lopatin] ventures even deeper into the uncanny valley separating "real" sounds from mimetic ones."[26] In a positive review UK magazine The Skinny described Garden of Delete in contrast to OPN's previous work as a "seemingly aggressive record; muscular in tone, schizophrenic in delivery, all the while possessing a maniacal grin on its face," calling it "Oneohtrix’s anti-ambient record."[30] Tiny Mix Tapes called the album "an unruly masterpiece of pure synthesis occurring in a post-PC Music world," writing that "with Garden of Delete, [Lopatin] sets out to implode his art in a brilliant display of cultural denial, a reflexive operation that claims a “total loss” of cultural net-worth by damaging itself with the same semiotic structures that it indicts."[28]

For The Line of Best Fit, Jennifer Johnson opined that "GOD isn’t about sensory pleasure. It’s about sensory gluttony, auditory overload, and revelling in the difficulty of its pacing," concluding that "It isn’t so much an album as a junk shop: that proverbial collection of oddities whose perceived value reflects more about the patron than it does the owner who placed them there."[25] Writing for Consequence of Sound, Sasha Geffen called the album "OPN’s most emotional work to date and also his most ridiculous. Its tragedy is bound up with its humor; its sublimity comes from the places where it feels the most broken."[23] Uncut wrote that the album "ultimately dissolves into a beautifully arranged and slightly sickly morass of curdled pop tropes, out of which spurt a bodacious riff or glossy rave arpeggio. Oddly no-one does this better."[21] Under the Radar called it "a complex beast of shade and mood, and [...] Lopatin's best work yet."[29]

Track listing

All tracks composed by Daniel Lopatin unless otherwise specified.

No.TitleComposerLength
1."Intro" 0:27
2."Ezra" 4:26
3."ECCOJAMC1" 0:32
4."Sticky Drama" 4:17
5."SDFK"Daniel Lopatin, Grotus, John Adams1:27
6."Mutant Standard" 8:06
7."Child of Rage"Lopatin, Michael Finnissy4:52
8."Animals" 3:54
9."I Bite Through It" 3:17
10."Freaky Eyes"Lopatin, Roger Rodier6:31
11."Lift" 4:09
12."No Good"Lopatin, Hans Reichel3:18
Japanese bonus track
No.TitleLength
13."The Knuckleheads"3:48

Personnel

Credits adapted from AllMusic.[31]

  • Oneohtrix Point Never/Daniel Lopatin – composer, producer, artwork
  • Paul Corley – additional production, mixing
  • Dave Kutch – mastering
  • Sebastian Krüger – photography
  • Andrew Stasser – design
  • Beau Thomas – vinyl cut

References

  1. ^ Fact | Oneohtrix Point Never unpicks the secrets of Garden of Delete
  2. ^ Loud and Quiet
  3. ^ Warp
  4. ^ a b c Skinny interview
  5. ^ Stereogum
  6. ^ a b The Fader
  7. ^ CoS | Interview
  8. ^ Rolling Stone | Hear Oneohtrix Point Never Glitchbanger From First 'Rock' Record
  9. ^ a b c d Dummy Mag
  10. ^ a b c Pitchfork
  11. ^ The 405
  12. ^ [1]
  13. ^ Fact
  14. ^ Stereogum
  15. ^ Fact
  16. ^ Pitchfork
  17. ^ Rettig, James (3 September 2015). "Oneohtrix Point Never – "I Bite Through It" + Garden Of Delete Details". Stereogum. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
  18. ^ Sherburne, Philip (3 September 2015). "Oneohtrix Point Never "I Bite Through It"". Pitchfork. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
  19. ^ Monroe, Jazz (21 October 2015). "Oneohtrix Point Never Shares "Mutant Standard"". Pitchfork. Pitchfork Media. Retrieved 21 October 2015.
  20. ^ Camp, Zoe (4 November 2015). "Oneohtrix Point Never Explores the World of LARPing in "Sticky Drama" Short Film". Pitchfork. Pitchfork Media. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
  21. ^ a b c d "Garden of Delete - Oneohtrix Point Never Reviews, Ratings, Credits, and More at Metacritic". Metacritic.com. Retrieved 2015-11-11.
  22. ^ AllMusic
  23. ^ a b CoS
  24. ^ Exclaim!
  25. ^ a b The Line of Best Fit
  26. ^ a b Pitchfork
  27. ^ PopMatters
  28. ^ a b Tiny Mix Tapes
  29. ^ a b Under the Radar
  30. ^ The Skinny
  31. ^ AllMusic
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