Oneohtrix Point Never

It’s often tricky to combine visuals with music when it comes to a live concert experience, but it’s never been a problem for electronic genius Oneohtrix Point Never. 0PN’s Daniel Lopatin works just as hard on screwed-up visuals as he does retooling the music from his albums in order to ensure that his live shows are a fascinating and absorbing experience, something he’s been doing since 2007’s wonderfully-titled Betrayed in the Octagon album. Lopatin creates music that’s as equally unsettling as it is beautiful, moving from ambient washes to pulsating, droning passages of noise that shake you to your very core. It’s music that’s constantly moving, like a sculpture or a painting that’s continually in flux. His most recent album, R Plus Seven found him moving to his spiritual home of Warp Records, a label that allows him to indulge his deepest artistic fantasies. To see 0PN live is to be taken to another world; by letting his music develop and move away from the structures found on record Lopatin’s compositions become a mind-altering feast for the senses. The bass lines shudder through your body, the ambient electronics soothe your brain before the wide variety of snyth noises combine with snippets of disembodied voices which call to you from the smoke surrounding the stage. Then there are the visuals, courtesy of artist Nate Boyce: weird 3D shapes that turn from spheres and cubes into spaceships and gun-like objects, moving around digital planes, always just out of kilter with the beats. You will come away from an 0PN show not knowing quite what just happened, but completely aware that you might never experience anything quite like it again.