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A muscular, tattooed guy in a black T-shirt with a weird neckline is telling me about cologne.
Weve all experienced start-up spam like this.
The only difference is thatthis particular adfeels shockingly un-self aware.
Even though the song is calm, it feelsanxious.
It looks like how the last couple years America have felt.
Daniel Lopatin, the man behind OPN, began his career making ambient music that skewed toward the cosmic.
No genre is too corny to interpolate.
Subcultures exist to be revered, not made fun of.
Your musical history is as valid as your musical present.
At points,Age Ofis pop country; at others, it is basically mutant R&B.
Im not interested in making anything that only reminds them of me.
Theyre actually saying something about their personality, their life, and what theyre interested in.
It kind of has this Captain Beefheart thing going on.
Im making music that I dont practically or theoretically even really understand how it works.
Your2014 tour with Nine Inch Nailsseems like a major turning point.
You suddenly had to contend with what huge audiences thought of your music.
Did that change the way you approached creating songs?I really do think so, yeah.
I think ofAge Ofas basically a little bit looser and freer.
Considering how conceptual MYRIAD is,Age Ofis really not.
All the music would just be ensconced by all this conceptual stuff that ended up being a distraction.
For awhile, I was actually really upset about that situation.
Something changed I dont know what exactly but I think that basically my life changed a little bit.
I was finding myself being a little bit more loose and free about stuff.
Also, collaborating with people and seeing the perspective on my musical tendencies in the studio.
I went on tour withAnohnias a member of Anohnis live ensemble.
I was writing really simple little songs, not really worrying about the production so much.
Obviously, [doing the score for]Good Timewas really time intensive.
Even the Twigs thing led to David Byrne because he was working in Twigss studio.
Things would just happen.
Songs that Id written for other people that I selfishly got sick of waiting for them to materialize.
[It had] no corners.
I thought, Okay, Im just going rent this place.
Its going to be inspiring.
I went into it with a built-in pessimism because Im such a fan of certain traditional rock narratives.
But it actually was really inspiring.
I moved the dining room table forward and sat underneath the glass lighting fixture.
It looked like a medieval crown.
At night its just dead silent.
I have my headphones on, so its just this impending doom of whats behind you.
And Im constantly watching shitty midnight movies.
Youre in this house on the hill where everyone can peer inside.
So all night, its justdoo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
All these fucking moths are killing themselves flying toward the light.
It also would create this grotesque tableau in front of the dead insects.
The lyrics are in the glass house its disgusting, warning, warning, warning.
That reminds me of astory you toldabout Iggy Pop singing the scene he was watching inGood Time.
Theres this insane accumulation of trash bags outside my studio all the time.
Theyd go, this is a dump!
Theres this whole thing about radiation and waste and some carcinogenic hazardous materials in general as a thing.
The most insane thing to me is that Greenpoint [Brooklyn] continues to be a place to play.
The overabundance of water keeps things growing in this area where there maybe a serious health concernunderneath the soil.
To me, thats like America in a nutshell.
But of course, I didnt map all of this stuff out.
Did that happen with theGood Timescore?
I thought, What if I make it, knowing what I know now about [music production].
Knowing that I could do this or that trick or whatever, what would I make?
I was just like, What is that?
Isnt that just kind of self-sabotage?
I definitely waned to use auto-tune.
Im aesthetically into the sort of cyber quality of auto-tune, but it needs to be clear in function.
It needs to have my grain of voice, my body.
My me in it.
How he got there was kind of out there, but the result was, I think, relatable.
When I listened toAge Offor the first time.
I kind of hate all of that shit.
But they were really recalcitrant to have me, for the most part.
There was a lot of blowback.
Because I was perceived as being somehow impure.
A few years later the internet pretty much obliterated all genre lines anyway.Exactly.
Thats whats so good about pop music.
Thats whats so good about the internet.
And thats whats so good about music in general.
I turn on the radio and its just completely bereft of individuality.
Theres all kinds of things that suck, but it also gives the opportunity for contrast.
It gives the opportunity for interesting iconoclastic moments to arrive that makes a big group of people think.
