DIGITAL MEMORY

The emotionally haunted electronic music of Oneohtrix Point Never.

- AMANDA PETRUSICH

The video for “A Barely Lit Path,” the first single from “Again,” Daniel Lopatin’s tenth album as Oneohtrix Point Never, takes place on a dark road in a shadowy forest. Two CPR dummies wearing turquoise jumpsuits are strapped into a self-driving car. On the floor, there’s an artificial-intelligence manual, a book about understanding computers, and a copy of “Erewhon,” the 1872 satirical novel that imagines a future in which machines achieve consciousness. The dummies play chess; they nap. Their rubbery fingers reach across the seat for each other. It’s sweet. At some point, the road gets rough and the dummies start flopping around. A Stop button is affixed to the gearshift, but it’s just out of reach. One of the dummies starts to cry. The car is off course now, hurtling toward oblivion. The feeling is of utter helplessness in the face of assured disaster. Then—I don’t know. Maybe one of them gets to the button? The screen turns scarlet and sinuous, and begins to throb. You can hear something like a heartbeat. The sequence recalls both a prenatal ultrasound and the Rapture.

The song opens with Lopatin singing. His voice is fractured and heavy with effects:

If I empty my mind
Do I scoop out my skull
What gifts would I find
Nothing's inside
Just a slug that provides
A barely lit path
From your house to mine.