The average music listener might not know Oneohtrix Point Never (OPN), the stage sobriquet of one Daniel Lopatin, but they’ll definitely be familiar with his experimental musical output. Lopatin is a well-respected name in electronic music, being a pioneer of the vaporwave genre. He’s also scored films that won him the Soundtrack Award at the Cannes Film Festival. Daniel also served as executive producer for The Weeknd’s Super Bowl LV Halftime show, and executive produced his latest album Dawn FM, having thirteen co-write and production credits.

Daniel reworked about a dozen tracks from his extensive OPN discography in his live show Rebuilds, which made its Sydney stop on 14th July. I was fortuitous enough to be seated at a great vantage point – the first row of the middle aisle on the second floor. This was part of City Recital Hall’s Switched On series, which “flicks the switch on an iconic venue and activates the Hall in a new light – a sonic shift to contemporary music and a whole new dimension in listening”. The Sydney show was the only date to boast 360º spatial audio, which made for a delightful treat when Foley samples and vocal chops would seemingly materialise behind earshot, before pinballing around the venue.

From the opening sound-set — “Where Does Time Go?“, the sixth track of 2010’s Returnal — it was evident that this was a multimodal experience: as much a visual lightshow as it was sonic escapade. Featuring live real-time animation from long-time collaborator Nate Boyce (incidentally, the Sydney show on 14th July was his birthday!) , the stage backdrop prominently featured an oblong screen with isometric shapes with trippy psychedelic transitions that constantly morphed and liquidised, one into the other. Other times, Ghibli-inspired animation clips appeared at the forefront, sometimes whimsical cartoon loops in the style of Adult Swim, and even YouTube video excerpts, with an X-Rayed negative filter thrown on. Even the ceiling would be occasionally painted in mesmerising light patterns, which few looked up to see.

“Where Does Time Go?” started with bitcrushed static, like digital rain, before pillars of vertical light accented every piano stab, and proceeded to shimmer like curtains behind Daniel, all immaculately timed. In fact, Daniel frequently toyed with the tempo, and our perception of it. Nate’s visuals flickered to match, over atonal square-wave chord sequences, before bathing the entire concert hall in an eerie green light as Lopatin’s second sound-set was complete tonal whiplash — radically shifting gears with larger-than-life drum samples, replete with machine-gun kicks and a throbbing 6/8 bassline. At points, the droning sub-bass would rattle the floor, and I could feel it pulsing in my chest whenever my feet were firmly planted. It was an intense, awe-inspiring sensory assault. Yet Lopatin, ever the aficionado of chiaroscuro (that is, tonally juxtaposing light and shade), would structure the sound design in a push-pull dynamic akin to the flux and flow of tidal shifts. An arpeggiated synth-wash would take over to provide moments of levity between the relentless chordal pulsing. The accompanying strobes simulated lightning, which gave an intriguing dancing movement to the smoke machine’s output.

Contrast is the underpinning of any OPN show. Lopatin’s third sound-set centred around a neon red Blade Runner aesthetic, full of disjointed ambience marked by ominous cyberpunk synthwave arpeggios, before buzzsaw synths would take over and shapeshift the overall sound into intricate complextro, with drum programming that struck like a sledgehammer, especially with fast-trailed echo and plate reverb, before seguing into an ocean of twinkling sine waves over ambient pads. Different modular frequencies would take centre stage in the mix of different tracks –it could be the sledgehammer drums (“Mutant Standard“), ominous drones (“Betrayed in the Octagon“), evolving arpeggios under shifting pads (“Boring Angel“), vocal chop samples (“Music for Steamed Rocks“), even the white noise (“Physical Memory“). Sometimes the crescendo of elements itself was the highlight. I particularly enjoyed “Zones Without People“, the title track off his 2009 release. Lopatin reworked the circular sine lead into a hypnotic metallic synth that surfed the noise gate as it oscillated between low and high frequencies like a pendulum, tickling the ears as it orbited the concert hall in 360º spatial audio.

In stark contrast to the colossal aural universes he constructed, Daniel himself had a very unassuming, humble demeanour onstage. Dimly illuminated by the laptop and digital instruments in front of him, he’d simply put his hands together in appreciation if the applause between tracks extended. Daniel let his knobs and boardwork do the talking, only speaking to the audience at the encore. To the audience’s credit — which, rather humorously, felt like a networking of indie musicians who looked like Kevin Parker’s multiversal variants — they knew how to savour a quiet moment and not break the silence, and gave thunderous response after bombastic sound-sets. Many seemed entirely transfixed to the stage; some nodding in tandem to the beat, others closing their eyes and letting the soundscape carry them.

You might’ve noticed I haven’t used the term “song” until this very sentence. This is because Daniel’s compositions under Oneohtrix Point Never feel more like experimental sonic sculptures, defying conventional linear song structure. Remarkably, despite the expansive array of textures Lopatin played with, none of the frequencies felt overbearing or painful, which is a tricky feat to pull off. Part of that can be attributed to the excellent acoustics and 360º spatial audio feature at City Recital Hall. But most of it owes to Daniel’s masterful interplay of nuance and resonance. For a genre steeped in digitised dystopia, his employment of lo-fi elements: tape hiss, vinyl crackle, and unorthodox vocal samples makes his brand of electronica feel strikingly human.