Daniel Lopatin is releasing his new Oneohtrix Point Never album Again on September 29 through Warp and he has now shared the first taste of what it beholds in the form of the closing track “A Barely Lit Path”.
Lopatin has said the new album is “a speculative biography”, and “A Barely Lit Path” makes a grand finale to it all – a grandiose firework show to cap off a life oddly lived. It starts with OPN in songwriter mode, rasping through electronic filters about the end; “Nothing’s inside / It’s just a slow, dead goodbye / A barely lit path / From your house to mine.” From there, the remainder of the song plays out in a glorious instrumental, percolating electronic snippets building to a luscious orchestral sweep conducted and arranged by Robert Ames and performed by the NOMAD Ensemble. Here we see his body being raptured into the sky, towards the pearly gates, but “A Barely Lit Path” carries OPN beyond that. We get to experience Lopatin’s death dream, a polychromatic spiral of sounds, colours and textures swirled together as the DMT hits his bloodstream; a psychedelic wonder show like the conclusion of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Needless to say, it’s breathtaking.
Watch the video for “A Barely Lit Path” below or find it on streamers.
Oneohtrix Point Never’s new album Again arrives on September 29 through Warp (pre-order/save). You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
