The Thousands

Those keen on synthesizer acts Free Choice Duo, Matthew Brown and Hochman and Hopkins will appreciate Brooklyn’s Oneohtrix Point Never; one Daniel Lopatin, who similarly deals in ululating tone fields, but with added science fiction ice and eeriness. Lopatin moves DIY trend-interests in 70s space mysticism towards more 80s-tinged, isolate territories in which the overall feeling is less of cosmic peace than of alien unknowing – Zones Without People, as one album is named, cut with dark, Tokyo-skyline type sublimity.**Rifts collects OPN’s three latest albums – Betrayed in the Octagon, Zones Without People and Russian Mind – over two CDs, the combined futurism of which is staggering. Lopatin’s simple technique is to set scale snippets after themselves, turning ad infinitum as if inside a mirrored box, then to douse the clocking patterns in flaring sounds of solar dawn. The effect is immediate: inexplicable, almost precognitive. Dreamy types with a fondness for 80s sci-fi will queer for these two hours of transcendent pop.