The 2kDozen 500: #21 - Oneohtrix Point Never, "Replica"

Here's some spooky stuff that I started listening to in the middle of the night while Oz Western "The Proposition" was on TV with the sound off. With all the nihilistic gore and existential gutshots, I was hungry for a bit of creeping dread. And it meant I didn't have to hear Ray Winstone's voice.

Listening out for the sound of my brain's reponses: I think this is where the potential fright lurks. The idea that I'm listening to my own listening. The black and white cover is of a skull in a hand-held mirror and some titles are labelling brainwork - "Sleep Dealer", "Power of Persuasion", "Remember", "Explain". Blood repetitively wooshes and surges around the brain on every track. This is my idea of what appeals and terrifies me in equal measure about this music - it's the sound of being broken, of perception fucked, of being stuck in these shitty cursebags we call bodies and our eyes locked on the bio feedback. I'm riddled with it.

It's a big lush sound composed of found sounds from TV advert compilations. I've just read something more clever and insightful than I can manage that refers to "his passion to find personal meaning in failed new age utopias and liminal science fiction environments" and "clarifying the past through blissful repetition of its signifiers". That might read as over the top, but it makes sense to me. I've a passion to find personal meaning in listening to music like this, but I suppose OPN has the drop on me there.

It's a case of repeating the same tiny fragments of music and vocal over and over, looping or banking it into great sluggish choirs until the meaning shines through. More power to a thousand elbows.

Rating: Found out of Sound