Oneohtrix Point Never

TODD L. BURNS

I’m pleased to be sitting next to Oneohtrix Point Never, so please give him a warm welcome. (Applause)

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Thanks, guys.

TODD L. BURNS

I guess we should start with your hat, because it’s where you come from: Boston. Did you grow up there?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I grew up in the suburbs outside Boston, like 20 miles west of Boston, and I went to college in western Massachusetts, about an hour and a half west from Boston. And then I returned to Boston and worked for a little while, then moved to New York in 2008.

TODD L. BURNS

What’s growing up in the suburbs of Boston like?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

It’s really mellow. There’s an undercurrent of puritanical stuff just ‘cause of the history, so you get a lot of uptight people. And lots of Victorian houses and then a lot of contemporary split-deck houses that were built in the ‘60s and ‘70s that are nice to look at and bike paths and trees, mostly idyllic and academic oriented ‘cause of the schools and the history of that.

TODD L. BURNS

Your parents were not religious though, were they?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

No, they were immigrants.

TODD L. BURNS

First generation?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, I was born here and they emigrated in 1982 from St. Petersburg. Their priorities were such that they weren’t finding themselves in any religious setting.

TODD L. BURNS

Why did they emigrate to the States from Russia?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

It’s a complicated question. The short answer is [that] the feeling of being stifled, in terms of opportunities, in the Soviet era was probably just too much for them. They were young and both pretty ambitious. My sister was nine and they had me on the way and I think they both saw better life opportunities, like a lot of immigrants.

TODD L. BURNS

You said your parents were ambitious. What were they doing?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I think they just weren’t satisfied. My dad had a degree and was capable of pretty high-level engineering stuff, but he found himself in a shoe factory, just kicking around. That was the story for a lot of people. They were very well-educated but kind of stifled. So for someone like my dad, he was perhaps adventurous or just concerned about his kids’ future, to the point where moving was realistic.

TODD L. BURNS

He was already a musician before he came to the States, and your mother also was a piano teacher?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

She studied classical piano when she was young and musicology. She was a producer of a Soviet radio program, so she did a lot of research and fact gathering. My father was basically on the other side of the tracks, having grown up in the Ukraine, which is a very different landscape. His city, which was a much smaller city, wasn’t ultra-cosmopolitan, so his upbringing was tougher. He taught himself accordion and transferred that to piano and was in a bunch of rock bands in the ‘60s.

TODD L. BURNS

So you had high and low culture in the house?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, definitely. For sure. And I think they helped teach other in a way.

TODD L. BURNS

Early on your mother tried to teach you piano. She made you take lessons and you weren’t too happy about it.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

She tried. I was kind of a slacker. I don’t think I was really too different than most kids I grew up with. I just wanted to be a monkey and hang out in a tree and play video games. Certain things I still retain from the lessons she gave me, just kind of basic harmony stuff. But I was terrible playing two hands, I cheated all the time, I’d listen to her playing and copy it. In my mind, I’m totally fooling my mom. I’m eight years old, I have no idea what I’m doing, it’s totally wrong. She’s just sitting there like, “Just forget it.” But, other little things, like recently someone noticed my hand posture – this was someone that studied classical piano – and they were like, “Hmm, nice posture.” I had no idea, but it was something she probably instilled over and over by rote, repetition, kind of instilled.

TODD L. BURNS

At what age did you say, “Mom, video games – that’s where it’s at”?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I’m not sure I ever said that. They did buy me a Nintendo, oddly.

TODD L. BURNS

Why oddly?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I just remember the shock ‘cause I never got any gifts, nothing. When I was sick my mom would buy me a G.I. Joe or something, but only when I was sick. But the Nintendo was an odd purchase. I was shocked, ‘cause it was expensive at the time, about $150. It seemed out of their style.

TODD L. BURNS

What were the games you were first into?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Early Mario. I wasn’t into any obscure games or anything. I was really bad at Zelda, I couldn’t find the raft (laughs). All my friends could find the raft and I couldn’t. I would watch my friends play video games – I think this is an important detail in my stunning memoir. I wasn’t good at video games, but I liked the fantasy, the immersive psychedelic experience, although I didn’t know what that was at the time. I loved listening to it, I loved watching it and my friends were good at it, and I’d watch them play. I was good at some games, like Mario Andretti’s racing for some reason. My dad would just buy whatever was in the cheap [section]. “Here’s this Mario Andretti racing game.” The worst game.

TODD L. BURNS

Your dad was also playing music when he came to the States. He was keyboard in a band, or was he playing accordion?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

He was playing accordion sounds, presets. You have to understand, Russian music is very provincial in a lot of ways. It’s basic and straightforward and even their pop songs are sad, for some reason. He had some real success in St. Petersburg in a band called Flying Dutchman. We found out in the last few years there was a Russian Encyclopaedia Of Rock and his band was listed in the top five or ten, I don’t know what it was. But it’s a big point of pride for him. But he wasn’t able to stay in the band ‘cause he had a family and didn’t want to drop out of school, so he de-prioritized that. But then throughout the ‘70s he jumped around in different resort bands, as I understand it, so he would play these Russian countryside, lakeside… I think one band was called Pelican. I can only imagine what these bands sound like.

TODD L. BURNS

No recordings exist?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

No, there was one label, one government label. Either you were a government- authorized band and you were on this label or you didn’t exist, pretty much. Also, it was a covers band. He played in a lot of covers bands, and we think of this as being a pretty trivial pursuit. That’s a game (laughs). But that actually makes perfect sense ‘cause it’s a phrase.

TODD L. BURNS

Describe your game, describes your father’s covers band.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

The cover band in St. Petersburg at that time was really fancy stuff ‘cause nobody could get their hands on American or British music. So if you could play The Doors or The Beatles you were basically this intermediary between life behind the Iron Curtain and the rest of the world. But that was prohibitive.

TODD L. BURNS

When he came to the States, was he was playing old Russian folk music to remind people of where they came from?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, they were little rock renditions of traditional songs. My dad is super into Joe Cocker and he loves people that take a classic song and rework it in their own way, repurposing. That’s what he would do in his band, or like Russian versions of Western songs. In the ‘80s he had this band called Second Wind. He was in his late 30s, early 40s, so they were like, “We’re over the hill, so Second Wind.” And they wore these matching checkered sweatshirts. I think he was having fun more than anything.

TODD L. BURNS

Eventually, though, you got the keyboard he was using. At what point did that happen? Or were you in bands before that?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I was not in bands. I have a hard time being in bands ‘cause I’m a megalomaniac (laughs). But my friends had a band, a grunge band, and the lead singer played the saxophone and scatted like Anthony Kiedis or whatever.

TODD L. BURNS

Doesn’t sound like a grunge band to me.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

No, exactly. My whole upbringing was just all these confused, haywire bad decisions. But that guy was Al Carlson, who is our mixing engineer, and the guitarist at the time, Joel Ford, is also someone who I work with now in various capacities. So we all stayed really close friends and grew up together, more or less. But I wasn’t accepted into the band because I was supposed to be the bass player, arbitrarily. They’re just like, “You’re the bass player.”

TODD L. BURNS

But you knew how to play bass?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

No, I didn’t know how to do anything, but I knew what the guitar looked like. But they didn’t like my picking style ‘cause it was guitar. I didn’t play like this, I used my thumb. So they rejected me. And then I went off on my own thing, “my experimental period”, like 13 or 15… not really. Nothing interesting happened, but when they caught up with me and we all converged and started listening to these records, these jazz-fusion records in high school, our taste started converging on that instead of Red Hot Chili Peppers or whatever. Then I was useful to them.

TODD L. BURNS

Seems that jazz-fusion is a pretty unlikely cool guy thing to be into at high school.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

There was nothing about us that was cool, and I still feel extremely awkward to this day. Nothing has changed in that sense. The thing is, my high school wasn’t cool. There wasn’t any punks or any indie rock presence. I was missing that entirely, I didn’t have that perspective. The weirdest thing that was going on in my high school was the theater kids doing pirouettes or reciting whatever. (Laughter) There was nothing going on.

TODD L. BURNS

Why don’t we play a song of nothing going on, a short one, but you’ve talked quite a bit about this album being very important to you.

(music: Mahavishnu Orchestra – “Resolution”)

That’s pretty epic.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

That was epic.

TODD L. BURNS

What was that?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

That was Mahavishnu Orchestra, a cut off of Birds Of Fire, a record my dad had taped on a Maxell tape with just a bunch of fusion stuff. Like he had a Jean-Luc Ponty record, just ‘70s stuff that was jazzy. The thing that’s important about all this stuff in general for me, I didn’t know at the time it was a mainstream entry way into long-form jam music. I didn’t know Neu! existed, I didn’t know Kraftwerk, I didn’t know synth music was out there. So it was an entryway into hearing textures that were unusual to me. I still love the music, I think some of it’s cornier than others, but you can say that about krautrock or whatever too.

TODD L. BURNS

So it’s the textures more than anything else that got to you?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, this album has [keyboard player] Jan Hammer on it and that track doesn’t really…

TODD L. BURNS

Yeah, every other track was at least 10 minutes long, so we thought we’d go for the short one. It’s not exactly representative of anything.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

It’s good, though, it definitely works. But I loved Jan Hammer, I loved Chick Corea, I loved synth players and the sounds of Arps and Moogs, and at that time even wrapping my head around… I didn’t know what I was hearing was a sample-and-hold function. I didn’t know much of anything, but I would hear these records and then the [Roland] Juno 60 my father had was in the basement, so I would go down there and do my extremely crude imitations of Jan Hammer or a [pitch] bender-laden solo or whatever. I was just piecing together, it was the beginning of me piecing together that vibe.

TODD L. BURNS

A lot of people would listen to that and be like, “OK. Here’s riffs, or here’s the complexity.” I’m interested in the texture being the more interesting thing to you. Obviously, the music you make is very abstract.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, I don’t know what drew me to it. I think it was instinctual on some level. I wasn’t being intellectual about it at that point in my life.

TODD L. BURNS

Was that the first stuff you started making?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Not really, I don’t know what I was making. I had such a rogue understanding of chords and stuff. It didn’t all start coming together until I started listening to radio and hearing contemporary stuff, and then hearing the influences of stuff in contemporary stuff, hearing techno and hip-hop. There was this college radio station, Emerson Radio, 88.9 in Boston, and they had really good hip-hop shows and techno at night. Just basic, kind of drawing parallels, there’s a scheme that’s a grander electronic music scheme, not just… texture was important, I was definitely drawn to music that was more abstracted.

I don’t know about you guys, but I have a hard time training myself to listen to lyrics. I have an amazing appreciation for it now, but I’m practically 30 now. It took me a long time to get to the point where I had the capacity to listen to music for its lyrics, so a lot of the music I was drawn to was just kind of… I wasn’t a lyrics guy. I don’t want to hear about your rock tale. I do now, in a way, it’s interesting to me, but at the time I didn’t really have the capacity for it.

TODD L. BURNS

So you go into the basement, you’re playing with this Juno 60. A lot of people who start playing with instruments want to move on to bigger and better machines that have real complexity, but the Juno 60 is a real love story for you.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, there are a couple of levels with it. One, it’s extremely sentimental. Everyone has things they’re in possession of, or they’re in their family, they have sentimental attachment to it. That’s one thing. Another thing is I learned on it, so I can use it really effectively ‘cause I focused on it. One of the things that overwhelms me to this day about gear is too many choices. When you’re like, “Oh, I can jack with any VST possible, I can have this synth from eBay or whatever,” you stop focusing on you, you just become this obsessive gear hound.

I’ve gone through phases like that where it’s this addictive thing, where you want to absorb as much sound as possible and hear as much stuff as possible and generate as much variety as possible. I don’t mean to judge it in a negative way, but one of the things that fundamentally shaped me was not having all those choices for many years, just having this one thing. It becomes about you as a composer or an artist, however you want to put it. It becomes about you and the gear. So it helped me ‘cause it was a reflection, a mirror for me.

TODD L. BURNS

Why don’t we listen to one of the first things you did as Oneohtrix Point Never. It’s “Russian Mind”.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Definitely not one of the first things, but perhaps early. Depending when I die, I guess.

(music: Oneohtrix Point Never – “Russian Mind”)

TODD L. BURNS

Do you remember recording this?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yes, vividly actually. I had just moved to New York and it was my first apartment, one I shared with a cat lady. I don’t know if they were feral cats or what was going on. It was just fucking weird.

TODD L. BURNS

How did you get into an apartment with a cat lady?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I just needed a place and my bandmate at the time – I was in this synth trio called Astronaut and my bandmate Andy Plovnick knew of an opening in this basement apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Upstairs was a totally happy scene and in the basement it was just fucking terrible. Cats just peeing on the couches, and the closet was divided – this is so informative for you guys – but the closet was divided. She had one half of the closet and I had the other half, the other side. Occasionally in the morning we’d be opening the closet at the same time. It was like something that would happen in a romantic comedy but neither one of us would want to look at each other and that would never change. So it was a brutal thing.

This track I did in the basement, it was one track, it was an Akai Headrush Delay and the Juno, and it was the arpeggiator in latch mode and some delay setting and chord changes. That was one of the few times where I was… There’s a lot of chords there. I don’t even know how that happened, I was just trying to do fake counterpoint stuff. Also, I was obsessed with this Dopplereffekt track called “Z-Boson” and this was my “Z-Boson” tribute/rip-off track. But yeah, it was one track.

TODD L. BURNS

This was early on in your recording career as Oneohtrix. When you were making this stuff, did you realize that this was a different project, a different name, a different thing?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

No, I’d already been doing the OPN project in Boston for a couple of years. This was actually my third proper release, so it wasn’t that new.

TODD L. BURNS

When you first started creating tracks like this, though… You’ve had a couple of other projects by yourself, and I wondered when you first created these tracks were you like, “Oh, this is something else”?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, on the first three records [which] were all compiled on this double-disc thing that [No Fun] put out called Rifts. The first four all had title tracks. The title tracks were always these arpeggiator jams, and in my mind they were like little film themes. I was really into soundtrack music, Bruton [Music] stuff and library records, stock music. A lot of what I was doing was referencing that, and also Legowelt – Danny Wolfers and his arsenal of aliases doing film-oriented action adventure, like spy movie music. So early on I was so into that and wanting to do it in my own way. That’s where that palette came from.

TODD L. BURNS

All the track titles are pretty evocative.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

It’s all sci-fi, I was obsessed with Philip K. Dick.

TODD L. BURNS

Betrayed In The Octagon.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, but a lot of the titles were… the thing is, they’re really jokey. I don’t know if people think I’m on that but they’re kind of taking the piss a bit. Still to this day, it’s not like, “I want to be an astronaut and travel to these…” I just got a kick that there was this whole world of records made by these dweebs with synthesizers, like me, that were imagined in these little studios, outside of the mainstream channels, that were aspiring to the most epic, phantasmagorical shit. I loved that and just kind of gravitated towards that.

TODD L. BURNS

So you’re constantly thinking about what this track is soundtracking?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, kind of. I guess the way my brain is wired, I like to have a point of view.

TODD L. BURNS

Does it come first, does it come in the middle or does it come last? The scene.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

It can come wherever. It’s just a way of negotiating my way relationship to music and art and ideas. I don’t think the music is dependent on my personal diary of little aesthetic ideas. I think they’re listenable records, they can be good on their own, but for me personally it was a really good way of getting psyched, getting engaged or having a point of view and believing in what I was doing. Even if those things were like ephemeral and subject to change, just whimsical or whatever or jokey. For me, it was like… I really needed that.

TODD L. BURNS

Why?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Because it makes me more in the moment, it makes me play better. I realize it’s not for everybody, but for me there’s an urgency to playing music. I want to push this weird corollary idea forward. Maybe I’m oversharing, but I tend to do that, I’m verbose about this stuff in general, but the best suggestion I can give is for people that want to do electronic music, find your reason to do it. Whatever that reason is, just own it and love it. ‘Cause your point of view matters, you’re a human being. Your point of view matters. That’s something that music gave me, too, it’s a way to engage with the world and be creative on your own terms. It’s good to exercise that part of your brain.

TODD L. BURNS

You put up a bunch of YouTube clips on my computer and I don’t know what any of them are. However, I think what you just said might relate to one of them.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

There’s so much cool stuff, but you’re right, this is one. This is Werner Herzog, part of his film Burden Of Dreams, which is a documentary about the making of the film where they drag the ship over the hill. What’s it called?

TODD L. BURNS

Fitzcarraldo.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Right. I think this is a clip from Burden Of Dreams, I’m pretty sure. Him and [Klaus] Kinski, the actor, they were really tight but they were also clashing a lot. They’re passionate guys and, I think for me, seeing the Burden Of Dreams documentary – not even his film, I didn’t even see the film till much later – but it was like, “Holy shit, people that are good artists have a point of view.” It’s not about whether they’re right or wrong, it’s completely debatable, but the spirit or the intensity of this man is such that it’s undeniable that he’s doing his thing, he’s working his methods out.

(video: Burden Of Dreams)

TODD L. BURNS

Do you ever get to that point in your music-making process of this (referring to Herzog’s voiceover) “obscene”…

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah. The thing is, I was listening to so many new age records, and they’re undeniably bad records, but there’s something about them I was listening to and enjoying. But I was fixated on this idea that you could use the tropes of new age music to describe something beyond the cliché that is new age music, like chill out and be in your Zen-like cave amongst nature. I don’t even like that, I don’t go to the woods or whatever, I don’t do anything. But that’s an interesting idea that people would want to do that or make music that created a simulated Zen forest vibe. I was like, “That’s a terrible idea, you should never do that.” What I was trying to do, whether I did or not I don’t know, but what I wanted to do was make music that implied certain aspects of new age but was pretty sinister.

TODD L. BURNS

You talked a little bit about Returnal, which was a record that was after Rifts, being your [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau record, the painter. Can you talk a little bit about that and explain what that means? ‘Cause I think it’s this simulated world thing a little.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Just the idea that Rousseau never…

TODD L. BURNS

He’s a French painter from the 19th century.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, he’s a French painter during this exoticism period. They’re very interesting. They’re not one-to-one depictions of nature, explicitly because he didn’t really like or appreciate nature. So, I was drawn to that, like, “Woah. That’s kind of a vibe.” Does that explain it?

TODD L. BURNS

Sure. Why not?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I just get in these things where like, if I start going down this rabbit hole it’s the only thing we’ll talk about.

TODD L. BURNS

We can go down the rabbit hole.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

It’s OK.

TODD L. BURNS

Tell me about that record, Returnal. It seems like it’s the one that brought you to a wider audience. Were you in a basement apartment with a cat lady recording that?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I was at my parents’ home one summer in between grad school years, between years one and two at grad school.

TODD L. BURNS

What did you study at grad school?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Library sciences. I wanted to be an archivist. I recorded it at home in an air-conditioned room.

TODD L. BURNS

You recorded it during summer. Is the season important to you?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

No, because I run so hot. I don’t like summer at all. My friends all know this about me. I hate summer because I sweat so much. I wanted to make this Rousseau jungle painting record inside my parents’ air conditioned home.

TODD L. BURNS

Why don’t we take a listen to one of the tracks from that record?

(music: Oneohtrix Point Never – “Returnal”)

Who’s that singing?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

That’s me. (Applause) Thanks! Wow! Not even my parents do that (laughs).

TODD L. BURNS

So your room is on the second floor and you come down and say, “Mom, Dad, come and listen to my new record”?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

No, I’d be far too embarrassed to sing in front of them. Basically, the record was finished and there was no title track. There wasn’t this track. I sat on it and I sent it to Carlos Giffoni at No Fun and he was like, “Ah, I don’t like this record.” I sent it to [Editions] Mego and didn’t hear anything back for a very long time, and that gave me a lot of time to think about what I’d done and I was like, “Oh, there’s something missing.” By that time I was back in New York, but I think also I wouldn’t have recorded it at home. But I recorded that in Brooklyn.

TODD L. BURNS

So the first person you sent it to was Carlos. Why?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

He had basically enabled my whole thing.

TODD L. BURNS

In what way?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

He reissued my first recording, my tape Betrayed In The Octagon, on vinyl. He put out Russian Mind, which was another record. Then he did the Rifts anthology. He’d been really instrumental.

TODD L. BURNS

How did you get in touch with him originally?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I sent him tracks through a messageboard. There was a noise messageboard that still exists called “I Heart Noisetroniks” or something. I didn’t know how else to reach him, and his MySpace quote – remember on MySpace they’d have these quotes by your name? His was like, “Do not ask me to play your festival.” That’s what it said and I was like, “Fucking asshole!”

TODD L. BURNS

The stuff you’re making is not noise, but you’ve gotten caught up in that scene.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

The thing is, by the time that Double Leopards, which is a group that inspired me a lot, were doing music that is not noise either, but is definitely situated among the global noise community. That whole style and approach to structuring improvisational music, that’s what I was exposed to with Double Leopards and stuff like that. So noise as this fist-pumping thing was not for me, but there were already bands doing interesting variations on that, but still using the structural approaches of noise to make different kinds of music, free, improvised music.

TODD L. BURNS

Do you think that Double Leopards were one of the bands that helped that along changing its mindset, the noise community?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, undoubtedly. I’ve rarely met a band in my generation of kids making peaceful – not really peaceful, but gentle – noise music that don’t talk about Double Leopards. Then they went on to form Religious Knives, which was basically a rock band with vocals. They were always, “I don’t give a fuck.” They just do whatever they want. And that was super inspiring for sure.

TODD L. BURNS

Carlos is obviously wide open ears. Why do you think he didn’t like this album? Did he explain further than “no”?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

No, he doesn’t explain, he’s a man of few words, but he doesn’t pander to anything. He won’t put stuff out just because… He puts stuff out that he likes. So ultimately, it was 100% OK, and I really appreciate that about him.

TODD L. BURNS

So why Mego next? Had Emeralds already…?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

It’s funny, it always seems Emeralds will put out a record on a label, then I’ll put out a record on a label. So I’m always in their kangaroo pouch or whatever. I don’t know, there’s just so few record labels that I knew about and respected or felt psyched about, so yeah. I knew Mego was out there.

TODD L. BURNS

They seem in the past couple of years to have really opened up again to different artists. They had a coterie of, like, Peter [Rehberg], who runs it, and Fennesz and all these European guys. Now you have Americans coming over and doing stuff.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I think Peter is a lot like Carlos in that way. He’s not somebody that panders to an idea of what he’s supposed to be. Mego represents certain things to certain people. There was an era when they were brutal, digital, Russell Haswell, Florian Hecker. There’s a very distinct sound with Mego that’s interesting. But Peter himself, his roots are very humble in a way, he’s a person that’s very familiar with punk rock. He’s a down-to-earth guy. [If] he gets interested in something, and he feels like it’s worth putting out, he does it.

TODD L. BURNS

I read an interview with you where you said you emailed him about possibly doing a remix album and you said, “I wanted that Mego vibe,” and he told you, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, he denies it. What I meant was… I shouldn’t have written that email. I write a lot of emails I shouldn’t write. But I was like, “Wouldn’t it be cool if Florian Hecker and every single dude from Mego patted me on the back and told me I was awesome?” Which is basically what remixes are. There are other things too. But I think his response was more just like, “Fuck off. Come on.”

TODD L. BURNS

So why did your latest album with Ford [& Lopatin], you did an entire remix album?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

That wasn’t really my idea. (Laughs) It’s fine, it worked out fine. The remix record sometimes can be really cool. In the case of the F&L [Ford & Lopatin] record, the songs are so varied, the stems are really interesting. There was a lot of room for seeing it become more dance edit-friendly, so it made sense in that case. But would I personally do a remix record again? Maybe not.

TODD L. BURNS

What is your approach to remixing? Have you done a lot of remixes?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Here and there.

TODD L. BURNS

Does there have to be something you like in the original?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

It’s very difficult, yeah. There has to be some element there that’s salvageable. I’ve noticed that a lot of the remixes I do sound the same, I think I’ve done one remix of many different artists, so I’m like, “Maybe I shouldn’t do these anymore.” My recording approach is pretty raw, or had been, so it’s difficult to massage what I do into a context that I think is like… There’s a factory, industrial- style approach to remixes that works. You cut stuff up in Ableton, you work things or you make them fit. You make a club edit or an ambient edit or whatever. I find it to be extremely challenging for me personally because I don’t necessarily utilize those tools that well or in that kind of way, so it’s tricky for me, the remix thing.

TODD L. BURNS

You said your recording process used to be raw, more raw. How’s it changed?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

The last record I made, Replica, we made it in a studio in a more or less professional environment (laughs).

TODD L. BURNS

Why do you laugh?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Just because we were having a lot of fun. You’re in a studio, you’re learning the technology on the go. I’d become somewhat familiar with Pro Tools from the F&L record prior, so there was a level of comfort with Pro Tools that was new to me. Even during [Ford & Lopatin’s] Channel Pressure, I wasn’t zipping around the tracks fixing stuff fast. I think the true mark of whether you’re good at Pro Tools is how fast you are at it (laughs). Then kind of understanding what Al, our mix engineer was doing and what he could bring.

TODD L. BURNS

Al seems pretty important to the sound.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, he’s super important.

TODD L. BURNS

What does he bring to it as a mixing engineer?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Bass. We just listened to “Returnal” and I was like “Oof!” I heard this and there was sibilant stuff, it’s very mid-band heavy, it was recorded in GoldWave in Multiquence. I don’t know if you guys know about it, but it’s not worth knowing about basically. But I’ve actually used those two programs in conjunction with each other for many years. So, Al, Al being super creative, but he’s also just a scientist. So he’s like, “Yeah, I want to make your record and bring out the whole spectrum. I want it not to be so mid-band heavy and to have low-end and interesting top.” Basic stuff like that.

TODD L. BURNS

Have you learned a lot from him or do you just go, “Go ahead, take care of it for me”?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

No, you can’t do that with an engineer, I don’t care what engineer it is. You have to mitigate it but at the same time there was a lot of jamming he was doing. We would do a lot of performance, one-take sampler performances. A [Roland] SP555, and I would just play the pads, I had an idea of an arrangement in my head. And while I was doing the arrangement and a take in the hopes that it would work, he was on a Sherman Filterbank and just shredding my 555 signal on another track. So there was that interaction and he was jamming, ‘cause he was learning the Filterbank during that session too. That became a big sound on that record, all the super-coarse sounds like audio being ripped, super low-end and fuzzy weirdness.

TODD L. BURNS

Shall we listen to a track that exemplifies that?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, we can listen to “Nassau.” The Sherman Filterbank comes in later, you can hear it. You can cut to the middle. This one’s mostly about low-end.

(music: Oneohtrix Point Never – “Nassau”)

(Applause) Thanks guys, that’s very sweet of you.

TODD L. BURNS

It’s pretty physical.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, that’s definitely what changed.

TODD L. BURNS

You put it out on your label, Software. Tell me about forming your own label and what that means. Are you going to put out records by other people or just your own stuff?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, the idea was basically to have an imprint that was administered by a label that…

TODD L. BURNS

It’s Mexican Summer, right?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, so Mexican Summer administers the label and basically is teaching us how to be a label and also is using their distribution arm to get our records into shops and make it visible to people.

TODD L. BURNS

Seems like a really interesting business model. I don’t even know if it’s a model exactly.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

It’s really cool, it came around the idea of them having a studio in their offices, which is a very rare thing. When I was talking to labels, what was being offered was good but not musically inspiring. It was like, “This is cool,” but they’re pretty straightforward arrangements. But I really don’t have the money, even if I take a deal with a label that on the surface is a good fit, I still to have spend tens of thousands of dollars on studio time to have that luxury of being in a studio without feeling pressured. “Oh, we’ve got to pack up and go?” So I really wanted to indulge in being in the studio environment for as long as I needed.

TODD L. BURNS

How long did you need?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I don’t know, it was an experiment. Channel Pressure took three and a half months or something because we were also learning about that studio. So those three and a half months cut down on the time it took to do Replica because we had learned certain things. The main thing I’m trying to say here is that it was enticing me not because I want to have a label or there’s a profit motive to the label – it’s because it allowed me to have more ownership, to be closer to and have access to this really beautiful studio that’s down the street from where I live. And that’s something I valued and still value very much. It’s been a good thing.

TODD L. BURNS

Why did you want to get in the studio so badly? As someone who does home recording, I would think you’d be comfortable setting up in your bedroom. It seems very important to you that you got there.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

It’s OK, but I wanted to make a record that sounds fuller. The studio is like a rock studio. That’s the thing that is important. This is an electronic music studio set-up you guys have here. But basically you have these stations – other than that main control room, live room area with the board and the Mellotron or whatever – you have these little bedroom setups, you even call them that. So what I wanted was an analog studio with the classic studio amenities, rock amenities, but to be making electronic music there. I thought that would make for something really interesting sounding. That’s what appealed to me. And it’s a very interesting space, kind of psycho-geographically. You’re locked in this amazing dungeon that’s dark and there’s a piano and a Neve console and a wet [live] room and really comfortable couches. It puts you in the zone, a focus zone.

TODD L. BURNS

Do you have trouble focusing?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, I can’t be in the studio all day. It’s not like it’s my studio. So when I’m doing stuff at home, I find that having to… it’s not even just the space, although working on headphones all the time can be super oppressive on my brain. Having to switch things on and off and set stuff up and be the engineer and the performer at the same time is distracting. When we talk about, like, “Oh, music has changed so much, you can make these records at home,” that’s true, but there’s something to be said for the old school approach where it’s just like, you’re there to perform, to make a record, you don’t fuss around with the guts of an operation. For me anyway, it can totally kill the vibe. It’s a mood shatterer.

TODD L. BURNS

You said it was a rock studio, but you created your own vibe? You brought vibe creators in? Lots of incense and curtains and… ?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Exactly. [Pink] Floyd posters? (Laughs) We brought our synths in ‘cause we had a lot of them.

TODD L. BURNS

How many did you have?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Between the three of us, we probably have 20 different synths. We have a lot of the same kind of stuff. We have some rack gear. When Al got in there he slowly brought his whole studio in and he’s been working there steadily for the past year now. He’s working with other bands, he’s working with Peaking Lights, Yeasayer recorded their record there. So Al’s been there and made it his home.

TODD L. BURNS

Why don’t we play a record from Channel Pressure, You keep mentioning it. This is a joint project with your friend Joel Ford, who’s also in Tigercity.

(music: Ford & Lopatin – “World Of Regret”)

Most of the people in this room I guess won’t know Tigercity that well. [This] seems to me like a continuation of what Joel was doing in that band. You don’t hear a lot of what you might have brought to the table on that song.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

It’s kind of a White Album thing going on where some songs were more driven by Joel, some by me. But whatever ideas were on the table, both of us were kind of throwing a lot of stuff together.

TODD L. BURNS

So where would we hear you on that song?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

All over the place. We used the [Roland] Gaia synth to get the weird scat dad sounds. This song’s cool. It grew on me. It’s definitely like we wanted to do almost this J-pop, cartoony thing and to have this overload of interesting synth moments, like Thomas Dolby style, where he’s showing you all these little strange…

TODD L. BURNS

Like, “Here’s what I can do with this synthesizer”?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, but in a really fun way that’s not wanky, just creating a zoo of little synth emotions and shapes. Yeah, I think I played most of the synth on it, some of the weird My Bloody Valentine string things. Usually Joel is doing all the drum programming, and all the basslines generally. Some basslines I do.

TODD L. BURNS

You said earlier that you're a megalomaniac. How does this [collaboration] work?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

It’s hard! It’s hard working with other people. Joel and I have a comfort level because we’ve known each other for a very long time.

TODD L. BURNS

You did a record recently for RVNG as well, a collaborative record: James Ferraro, Laurel Halo, David Borden, who’s been around for a long time doing synth stuff. Can you talk a bit about the process and how it works? There was also someone else involved in this record.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yes, Samuel Godin, who is David’s stepson. I was approached by RVNG and asked to do one of their FRKWYS series that pairs different generations of artists together. And I really loved David Borden, I thought he was an unsung hero in a lot of the conversations about synth music. Interestingly enough, he has about a minute-and-a-half of music in The Exorcist. But he was mostly this guy who was totally doing his own thing in the ‘70s, he was in Ithaca, a very close cohort of Bob Moog . Moog would give his band, Mother Mallard, the beta test of all his music stuff as it was coming out. They were all very close and there was this network of people up there at that time. But he never moved to New York. He was basically on the outskirts of the minimalist scene. There were Steve Reich and Philip Glass, and those guys knew him and he knew them as well, but he was like, “I’m gonna stay here in Ithaca and do my thing.” But he had some very interesting records. What’s interesting is that they’re played through manually by his band or him solo. There’s no sequencing. It’s almost mathematical.

TODD L. BURNS

How did you approach working with him?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I knew I wanted to get a lot of other people involved because I thought it would be fun to step outside this specter – is that the word? – of two people. I just didn’t want it to be like Tekken, like, “In this corner, David Borden.” It just seemed lame. I just got people together who I thought would be fun and also enthusiastic about synth music.

TODD L. BURNS

It’s a really cohesive record. With five people involved, I’m wondering how that worked.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

It was all about laying back, like jazz style. You really have to allow other people to breathe and listen. The most interesting thing for me was doing what I do and having this improvisational approach with other people and not overplaying. Everyone was so giving and allowed each other to do their thing that they created. When five people are all holding back, it’s really cool. It’s almost like someone’s supposed to take the lead or whatever. But it created a really interesting ambient sound.

TODD L. BURNS

The other collaboration we should talk about before we open it up to questions is Antony [Hegarty, AKA ANOHNI], who sang another version of “Returnal.” Is that right?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah.

TODD L. BURNS

How did that come about?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

He’s a really polite guy and he emailed Carlos and asked permission. “Can I email Dan?” That’s the nature of Antony, his character, he’s an incredible person. He had seen some of my videos and apparently it was the videos.

TODD L. BURNS

The videos on YouTube?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Yeah, he saw my Sunset Corp YouTube account stuff and thought it was cool.

TODD L. BURNS

And what do you make of what he did with it?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

It was amazing. The cool anecdote that I can say about that is he tricked me. He said, “I’m gonna do this cover.” I was like, “OK, cool. Are you going to do all the parts?” Then he was like, “Hey, I’m doing it. I’m at the studio in Manhattan now. You should come down.” I was like, “Cool, I’m going to get to watch this incredible musician play one of my songs and hang out.” So I went down there and this is cool, I get in there and he’s like, “Piano. You!” And I’m like, “Fuck!” I didn’t even know how to play the fucking song, I had no idea. But I figured it out, and he was really supportive and amazing. What’s funny is how sweet to me he was, but how aggressive and intense he was with his vocal takes. He’s extremely efficient and he can basically just jump in at any point, he has an amazing memory. And the speed and the language he uses. The man is seasoned. Seeing that was incredible. I was just like, “Phew, I’m too slow and stoney.”

TODD L. BURNS

Do you think you’ll ever get that way in the studio or are you just too stoned out?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

No, I’m not that stoned out. [Laughs] I guess I could, but the thing is, he’s such a talented singer and pianist. Even on a keyboard, I have to deploy so much trickery to make things sound right. I have to kind of lie and combine little bits. I’m sure you guys know about this. It’s an electronic music thing, a lot of us aren’t really natural musicians. Some of us are. It’s a lot of multi-tracking and lies.

TODD L. BURNS

Did you show him your piano posture, though?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I don’t remember. I was so nervous.

TODD L. BURNS

Why don’t we watch one of the videos from your Sunset Corp thing and then open it up to questions after that?

(video: Sunset Corp – “nobody here”)

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

That’s all it’s gonna do, so…

TODD L. BURNS

It’s very beautiful though. (Applause)

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Thanks, you guys are too sweet.

TODD L. BURNS

Does anybody have a question they’d like to ask?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Shall I do the pointing?

TODD L. BURNS

You don’t have to.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

You were talking earlier about how sometimes when you’re creating your music, you have little flashes of a film score or something. If you were given the opportunity to totally rescore a movie, what would you pick? Wipe it clean and you do it.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I don’t know, that’s a tough question. Did you hear my Michigan accent for a second there? My girlfriend’s from the Midwest. (Adopting Michigan accent) I don’t know.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Or just a genre?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Comedy. I think there’s room for much better music in comedies. Tim Burton’s films are incredible. Who does his?

TODD L. BURNS

Danny Elfman.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Elfman, yeah. That’s great, but I don’t really like the orchestral stuff that much. That would be cool with like Pee Wee’s Big Adventure or something with a really sinister… That’d be cool. Something lighthearted in a sense, but absurd.

TODD L. BURNS

I thought you were thinking romantic comedies. Put a sinister score under that.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

That would great too, that’s fucking awesome, like some Jennifer Aniston shit (laughs).

AUDIENCE MEMBER

The first track on Returnal is quite noisy, almost intimidatingly so. Did you think about that when you were doing it? ‘Cause it’s upfront. If someone went into the store and listened to the record they might think, “First track, blistering noise.” Was it meant to be controversial or was it just one of the songs you made and that’s where it goes?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

A lot of people think I’m just doing that on purpose to take the piss and scare people away. But I wasn’t doing that. I wanted to establish it, like in a film where the first shot is exposition that gives you a sense of location and then it goes into the character world. I wanted to start with this hectic world that gave way to this other place. So that was pretty strategic.

TODD L. BURNS

Did you record it first?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Um, yeah. I don’t remember, probably. No, I knew I wanted to set it up that way. I don’t know if I recorded it first.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I’m curious to know when you got into sample chopping instead of the straight synth and if you see any correlation between the two things.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

The first thing I chopped was a [jazz fusion group] Return To Forever jam. Was there an old Roland sampler, the MS something? Whatever. It was big, it was grey, it had a red button on it. I chopped up some Return To Forever jams.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

“La Fiesta”?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I don’t know, it was something on No Mystery, I can play it. But this is the thing that got me into sampling, was this fucking track. He’s just a genius.

(music: Gang Starr – “Robin Hood Theory”)

This is in high school for me, but I didn’t really have the technical know-how, the approach or the gear, I just wasn’t there yet. But I always wanted… Even with his melodic sense, the aesthetics of the cut, this sort of alien asymmetrical thing. (Waits for the beat) That. (Stops music) So even though I wasn’t doing that, I was. I didn’t have a sampler, but I was chopping things up – I would do noise collages. Then I would chop things in GoldWave that had this swing to them. That’s probably something a lot of you guys do. The only difference now is it’s probably more explicit. Before I always wanted to make these songs, but chop them in a way that there was a swing or a color to it.

TODD L. BURNS

Who are some of your favorite hip-hop producers?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

[DJ] Premier is the dude for me forever. He’ll always be the guy. And RZA, Liquid Swords, basically. But Premier was the guy. RZA came later, but when I heard this record, Moment Of Truth… I still listen to this with complete fascination and concentration, I just think he’s one of the best out there.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

You were talking earlier about artists having an opinion and a reason to create work. Can you elaborate what your reason is, perhaps?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

No, it’s hard to. It can be independent of an overall ethos or something. It can be, “What’s my approach to this project, what’s my approach to this hook?” I’m fundamentally concerned with stylizing what I do: styles, music history, the music historical context of music, music that is about music; that’s sort of the bedrock. So I’m a fan first. I don’t know if you guys saw James Pants last night, but I was totally blown away by his set. His point of view is his love of music, period, so that resonates with me. There are other things that are more specific to a project or an album or a track, but approaching things from a music historical context and integrating that into what I do is very important.

TODD L. BURNS

With the new album, what was the music historical [context]? Seems like maybe new age was a big thing to you.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Maybe in previous records it was new age or library records, stuff that was thrown to the wayside. In a way the new one as well, in the sense that I sample a lot of commercials that are basically crap. Ephemera. So using stuff, making new use, repurposing stuff that is otherwise subjugated to be ignored or made irrelevant. And rightly so. But to me, it’s like the way Native Americans would use every part of the buffalo. You don’t want to waste all the stuff that’s out there ‘cause some of it can be pretty enlightening or interesting or reveal certain things about who we are and what we do as human beings. So mining all these commercials I sampled was a revelatory process of getting closer to the hidden secret messages.

TODD L. BURNS

What part of the buffalo were the commercials?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

That’s a really psychedelic question (laughs). I don’t know. The butt. I mean they’re commercials, so it’s tough. They don’t want to be good, they’re not good. They are noise and they’re oppressive in their purpose.

TODD L. BURNS

Definitely the butt.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

The butt, or some sort of cancerous growth on it, I don’t know.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

The Oneohtrix stuff that you do doesn’t have much drums on it. Was that an aesthetic decision or was it just that drums are hard?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Drums are very hard, I’m not good at them to be honest. I never was. It’s my air instrument. Whenever I fantasize about coming back in another lifetime, I’m a drummer and I’m wearing mesh shorts and just pounding away. It’s incredible. I think there’s a way to insinuate rhythm without having severe drum skills.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I know what you mean, using arpeggiation or all sorts of things, but let’s say that tomorrow you wake up in your mesh shorts and you’re an awesome drummer. Would you have drums on that stuff? Or have you developed rhythm in such a way that now it’s done?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I know what you mean, but I don’t think so. Not in this lifetime. What I’m good at doing is creating this slightly offset space, this space that’s my own, and part of it is when you have the rhythm track that’s hard, that’s fixed, you’re on rails, in a way that I’m never comfortable with in my musical context. But clearly, Premier is fucking awesome. I listen to so much music with drums, and I never feel it’s limited by those drums whatsoever. If I added drums I’d just feel like I’m doing some Flying Lotus stuff or whatever. And he’s real good at what he does, but I don’t think it’s for me necessarily.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

The first time I heard your stuff was that track “Nobody Here” and it was on a CD-R of about 20 things. It said KGB Man on the front. Will KGB Man ever reappear? ‘Cause some of it was, not meaning to be rude, but it was kind of bizarre, like sampling “Castle In The Sky.” Are you over that or is KGB Man waiting to be resurrected?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I just want to make a distinction that this was something not meant to be looked at like my main thing. I think a lot of those eccojams are just cathartic for me and they’re cathartic for people who like them, but also a lot of people really don’t like them (laughs). They’re like, “What the fuck is this bullshit?” I make them when I hear something in pop music, and I’m just like, “Fuck, I just wanna hear that over and over, it’s just the dumbest thing.” If I don’t hear that I won’t make it, but if I do I’ll just fucking loop it, that’s it, put some echo on it. It’s not mine to do.

TODD L. BURNS

Where does the video for that stuff come from?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

“Nobody Here” was…

TODD L. BURNS

But just in general, how are you using that?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I liked the image because, as a corollary to the idea, it matches the sentiment of the lyric. I’d just moved to New York. This is the same time as that cat lady shit. I was like like, “What the fuck is it with New York? It’s a horrible place! Nobody should live here.” It’s a place where there are tons of people, but I never feel connected. So that made sense, like this rainbow bridge, this city, like look at all this fucking opportunity, it’s all right here. But you never get it. And some people do. But this is my personal experience, I just like the allegory of that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

You said earlier that sometimes you have to lie when you play electronic music. Do you think electronic music should be played by real musicians and what do you think the future of electronic music will be like?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

It shouldn’t be played by anyone specific, and real versus unreal is not relevant to making something that’s powerful or worthy of being in the world. It’s a personal thing, I don’t think music needs to be music to be musical, or be music, if that makes sense. I have personal goals moving forward that involve upping certain things. I would like to feel a little more flexible and not feel hinged to my array of ten chords that I fucking use over and over. There are other things that are technical things I’d like to improve. I don’t think anyone should ever be intimidated to be more technical or at the same time, be aloof or above that and just be like, “Well, those are the trained musicians. I’m an artist.”

There’s examples of great work everywhere, but it’s just about utilizing what you need to drive your message home. The toughest part of music for me… I always think of that Stevie Wonder record, Music Of My Mind. That’s an amazing title for a record that’s his first breakout record when he wasn’t being held down by having to be Stevie Boy Wonder. That’s what I always think about, the music of my mind – like, how do you translate the thought to the expression of the music? That’s the difficulty. It has nothing to do with what you know, it’s just a process to me, it’s just life. You do your best, that’s pretty much it.

TODD L. BURNS

On that note, thank you very much.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Thanks guys. (Applause)