CHILL WAVES The cold, the trucks, the rats — nothing could dispel the aura of Oneohtrix. |
When I left my house for work last Wednesday morning, September 28, the temperature hovered at a balmy 70 degrees. Certainly irregular for late September and seemingly the last opportunity to take advantage of the fleeting days of T-shirt weather. When I arrived at Fort Point Channel that evening to see Oneohtrix Point Never (birth-name: Daniel Lopatin), it was like the antonym of balmy.Nestled along the blustery, rat-infested bank of the harbor is an otherwise quaint little public park that played host to the Brooklyn-by-way-of-Boston electronic producer, in what was the first in a series of monthly experimental music showcases put on by Boston Cyberarts. And despite the fact that I essentially stayed curled in a fetal position for two hours and should have been miserable, it all sort of made sense. Armed with frigid synth washes, Oneohtrix's music sounds like the noise that fills your ears when cold hands brush the back of your neck. Both fleeting and intense, Lopatin's ambience succeeded for nearly an hour in transfixing a surprisingly robust early-evening audience of 75. It was so enveloping that, at times, the surrounding environment and climate were rendered null. That is until a helicopter flew by, or a truck barreled down Congress Street, and I was once again reminded that I was on the urban tundra.
Casual passersby weren't nearly as engrossed. Occasionally, a man in business attire wandered past, shook his head, and snapped a cell pic. Or a party of lethargically buzzed patrons from the neighboring Smith & Wollensky cast a collective blank stare. Opener Lichens was the primary subject of this gawking, both because it was still daylight when he performed and because his set consisted of a seemingly improvised half-hour drone piece. Overall, it was a perfect opportunity for the working masses to get a glimpse of the spectacle before Cyberarts mercifully moves it inside next month.
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