Last year’s Returnal album was a pretty enjoyable if far from earth shattering release from Daniel Lopatin and while it’s somewhat of a given that he’d have to pull something pretty incredible out of the bag to ever top his Rifts compilation, I was still intrigued to see what he’d offer up this time. Opener “Andro” eases us in with a decent, if typical, OPN soundscape, which eventually gives away to slightly warped tribal-ish percussion, hinting that we may see Lopatin introducing new elements to his pallete. “Sleep Dealer” then sees a rare excursion into beat driven territory, with a small kick drum loop and a flute type sound giving the track a different sort of groove to be expected from Lopatin, hinting more at 70’s funk than colder 80s sounds. “Power of Persuasion” similarly features more organic instrumentation, led by a couple of jittery piano loops backed by Vangelis-esque assonance. As the song continues it becomes surrounded and eventually lost in a sea of quite wonderful bass with the piano eventually disappearing completely, the song collapsing on more stoccato drones.
“Remember” passes by forgettably before the album hits its peak in the middle section with the wonderful title track, which again sees Lopatin return to a piano motif, but instead restrains himself wherein instead of letting the other elements swamp the song, they gently infuse the song with more brittle starkness. It’s arguably one of his most effective songs yet, it’s simplicity being it’s strong point. Lopatin proving that he can still create wonderfully emotive music, with seemingly little effort. “Nassau” continues the theme of sharp, jittery sampling, this time with odd vocal sounds and glitchy noises before allowing another melancholic piano riff to come to the fore. The rest of the song is lead by this while he brings the earlier chopped up sounds in and out, introducing additional oddness before he reduces it to a purer ambient style, again leaving us with another touching, wistful song.
“Up” kicks off with a heavy drum loop, somewhat reminiscent of the Games mixtapes, which, as is the way more than once on the album, fades away to ambience, letting the synths and piano breathe more. I would have found this a much more interesting composition if he’d melded that opening loop with the 2nd half of the song. On “Child Soldier” the chop n paste approach is brought to it’s peak in a rather irritating way, it’s basically just a mess of grating sampling; his final descent into ambience pasted on for no other reason than it being the “thing” he does. “Explain” brings the album to a calming close with multi layered “aahhhs” (Enya much?) – not dissimilar to the opener but with a brighter tone -, warm synthetic bass and the usual drones that generates a feeling of optimism compared with the more downcast and darker feeling contained within much of the rest of the album.
As an album it works reasonably well, and while the likes of “Submersible” and “Remember” sound like he knocked them out in his sleep (one aided by a bucket of valium) he has advanced on Returnal and it contains some pretty special moments of depth and emotion, which are welcome additions to his discography. After the Games/Ford & Lopatin album was such a disappointment earlier in the year here he proves that he is still, at times, an artist worth giving some time over to.