Tranquil indeed: Why Oneohtrix’s latest album leaves me cold

Plus Danny L Harle, Maryam Saleh, DJ Smudge and more

Tokyo Skytree, being magnificent at night

Tranquilizer, the new album from Oneohtrix Point Never, has sent me into an emotional tail spin this week.

Not so much the music, which is, on the whole, comforting and rather beautiful. But it’s the concept that’s got me - and in particular my own reaction to it.

For anyone who has been under an electronic rock, Daniel Lopatin’s eleventh studio album was inspired by a collection of 90s sample libraries that he found online and which subsequently vanished, a discovery that left him, apparently “creatively charged”.

“It’s a record shaped by commercial audio construction kits from a bygone era - an index of cliches turned inside out,” Lopatin explained.

Lopatin, of course, has been here - or here-ish - before. Replica, his fifth studio album, was produced using samples from bootleg DVDs of old TV adverts from the 80s and 90s, for example, and there is generally some kind of conceptual idea behind his work.

Again, which was released in 2023, was “a speculative autobiography”, a kind of imagined collaboration between Lopatin and his younger self; Garden of Delete was even more intricate, its story involving an invented “hypergrunge” band and aliens,

These are fascinating ideas and I love the idea of music having some serious thought behind it. But, for some reason, Tranquilizer has started to bug me.

I think it may be because the concept is actually too good. This is a constant battle I find when writing about electronic music: there is some amazing music out there, about which I have precisely nothing to say. It’s catchy, it makes you want to dance; and that’s about it.

That doesn’t make it any better or any worse than a long-thought out concept album, just different.

There is a lot to say about Tranquilizer, though, so much so that it feels like a bit of a cheat. Here’s the concept behind the record, it seems to say, now go wild.

As a journalist, I can hardly complain about this - and there have been a number of excellent reviews of Tranquilizer.

But would Tranquilizer be so impressive if we came at it cold? If we knew nothing at all about its origins in lost sample CDs and “cliches turned inside out”?

We will never know - and that feels vaguely unfair, as if Tranquilizer has got an illegal helping hand into our affection.

People who write about electronic music tend to come from one of two camps: those who discovered electronic music in clubs; and those who found it elsewhere.

Although I started listening to electronic music way before I was old enough to go clubbing, it’s still, generally, music for dancing, for me. A lot of the electronic music I love best - house, disco, jungle - is music for dance floors, which doesn’t always translate as well into the written word.

You see this frequently in dance music journalism: Rufige Kru and Louie Vega’s most recent albums - to name but two - are in every way the equal of Tranquilizer; but they generated little in the way of reviews.

Does this matter? Well, it matters to me. Perhaps too much.

Simon Reynolds, a journalist who I suspect grew up dancing, coined the term “conceptronica” in 2019 for precisely this kind of music.

“Conceptronica isn’t a genre as such, but more like a mode of artistic operation - and audience reception - that cuts across the landscape of hip music, from high-definition digital abstraction to styles like vaporwave and hauntology,” he wrote in Pitchfork.

Reynolds put the genre’s growth down to the difficulty of attracting attention in the age of digital abundance. “Concept-driven projects offer a way for artists to compete in an attention economy that is over-supplied while reflecting their enthusiasm for a vast array of ideas,” he explained.

And you might say, well what’s wrong with that? Nothing really, I suppose. Although it seems a little arse about face, with the concept dragging the music around by its ear.

Reynolds also nailed what annoyed him about conceptronica. “As fascinating as conceptronica can be, something about it always nagged at me. If its subject, in the broadest sense, was liberation, why then did I not feel liberated listening to it?” Reynolds wrote. “It rarely provided that sense of release or abandon that you got with ’90s rave or even from more recent dissolute forms like trap.”

This sounds like the words of a man from the dancing side of music journalism. When you hear the right song on the dance floor it just hits; there’s no intellectualising, no guessing the artist’s intentions, just pure physical response. You know the feeling - and if you don’t, then I feel sorry for you.

Tranquilizer - and the work of Daniel Lopatin as a whole - is precisely the opposite of this, for me. It’s impressive and interesting; but it leaves me cold, a feeling reinforced by Lopatin’s recent gig at Barcelona’s (generally excellent) Mira festival.

Nothing connected; nothing cut through; there was no animal response, just pure left-brain thinking and conceptual admiration. I enjoyed the concert - but it was the opposite of a dance-floor revelation.

I’m reminded of when I first got into Kraftwerk, as a kid. I really wanted to like Kraftwerk before I heard them; I knew they were important, gods of electronic music that no serious music fan could live without.

And that was kind of what I was expecting: something conceptually important and intellectually stimulating, which, obviously, Kraftwerk are. But imagine my surprise when I first heard them and they turned out to also have tunes that struck right into the belly! It was so easy to love Kraftwerk.

I don’t get the same with Tranquilizer or Lopatin’s work as a whole; Tranquilizer is a record that I find easy to respect and difficult to love, an intellectual answer to a problem no one asked.

I should be clear: Tranquilizer is a brilliantly produced record with a fascinating idea behind it. And if that isn’t enough, well maybe the problem is mine rather than Daniel Lopatin’s.

But short of intense therapy and a very long holiday, I can’t really see my attitude changing. So I guess, for now, I’ll just have to suck it up.

Some listening

Mr Tophat and Art Alfie - Talkin Talkin

My god there’s a pleasure sometimes to see a groove run elasticated and free, content to wander the fields of funk for a while with no great aim in mind.

Talkin Talkin, the final track of Mr Tophat and Art Alfie’s new vinyl-only EP KVK1200, is 19 minutes long and not a second is wasted. Which is not to say that it couldn’t be shortened - of course it could - but that every second seems to count, as the song wends its merry way to disco heaven, via a sleek, ever-evolving beat, wandering bass line, a well-employed snatch of 20th Century Steel Band’s Heaven and Hell Is on Earth, subtle acid tweaks and some prog guitar freak outs towards the end. It’s The Lord of the Rings of house music; you know where you’re going to end up but the ambling journey is well worth your time.

Danny L Harle (feat. Oklou and MNEK) - Crystallise My Tears

Danny L Harle is such a great songwriter that I can (almost) excuse his obsession with trance music. Crystallise My Tears has a lovely pop melody at its heart, hopeful in a forlorn type of way and Oklou on great vocal form - “a surreal alien beauty to her delivery” as Harle reckons and he is right.

He surrounds this with piano barrel chords and a stuttering synth effect (good), a genuinely horrible Midi riff (bad) and a drum rhythm that is ever so slightly to the side of pumping (could be worse). It’s pop songwriting at its best and, while I might want Harle to tone down the trance-iness for once, I fear I am on a loser there. (And yes, I know, everyone loves trance. Well I don’t. And I have listened to FAR too much of it already in my curséd life to know it.)

Maryam Saleh - El Fetra

El Fetra, the first single from Maryam Saleh’s new album Syrr, is so gorgeously sad that it might shipwreck you on the rocks. The vocal melody is beautiful, like a slowly spinning star, and Saleh delivers it with the kind of casual indifference that disguises a whole world of feeling. The music, meanwhile, is funereal but oddly full of life, a world of paradoxes you have to dive into.

DJ Smudge (feat. Tor Maries) - Me Be Ecstasy

Who is DJ Smudge? The internet suggests a few possibilities but I’m not entirely convinced. Could it, in fact, be the work of Geoff Barrow, whose debut film GAME features Me Be Ecstasy on its soundtrack?

Whatever the case, Me Be Ecstasy is a superior piece of throwback rave nostalgia that does absolutely nothing clever but does it with the confidence that only a sharply cut-up breakbeat and the perfect rolling bass line can bring. Extra marks, too, for the perfectly dodgy key change half way through, the dog worming tablets really kicking in.

Things I’ve done

Line Noise podcast - With Bill Brewster

You may remember that a few weeks ago here I wrote a piece about Burn It Up: The Rise Of British Dance Music 1986-1991, in which I quoted from an interview I did with hugely respected author and DJ Bill Brewster, who compiled the album. Now the full interview is here, for your listening pleasure. We talked about Samantha Fox and Steinski; Hans Zimmer, Mel and Kim, the Paradise Garage; and why house took off in the UK where hip hop didn’t really. Plus we discussed how to balance recognising dance music history without being a dance-floor bore.

One Minute Review - FKA Twigs’ Eusexua Afterglow

I know the reviews have been a bit underwhelmed but I love Twigs in after-party mode. You can hear my thoughts on Eusexua Afterglow in convenient, one-minute form and view my face as I battle full-on Barcelona winter sun.

Things other people have done

Noise is a Healing Force: My Bloody Valentine Live

Obviously I’ve been drinking in every last fragment of information I can about the My Bloody Valentine gigs this week. I’m only human. But I think Daniel Dylan Wray’s report from the band’s Manchester show, in which he reflects on the idea of noise as a force for healing, is probably my favourite of al the reviews.

“Sometimes the most effective way to clear something is to flood it. From the second MBV start to play tonight, via a swooping, swaying yet pummelling ‘I Only Said’, there is an inescapable sensation that washes over me. There is a soothing, lulling, almost tranquil feeling to having the insides of your head rearranged through a surge of noise and volume that almost renders thought impossible.” Amen to that.

The Playlists

Available via Apple Music: The newest and the bestest and The newest and bestest 2025.

And Spotify (for the moment): The newest and bestest 2025 and The newest and the bestest.

Paid subscribers get bonus podcasts, you know.