As far as Oneohtrix Point Never records go, Tranquilizer’s most immediate antecedent is Replica, an album that’s almost a decade and a half old. While that collection saw Daniel Lopatin wistfully repurpose sounds from bootleg DVDs compiling TV commercials from the ‘80s and ‘90s, Tranquilizer mines from a set of commercial sample CDs preserved on the Internet Archive. The flimsiness of that maintenance – the page was taken down, then suddenly came back – is part of what inspired the producer and differentiates his follow-up to Again, the way swathes of potentially soulful music can be lost to and resurface through time. Lopatin was also more concerned with the totality of the work, a fact that lends itself well to the track-by-track review format to which we’ve committed. “Replica is this incredible thing of these blasts of music,” he said in a recent interview, “and Tranquilizer you get that too, but you can sit down and experience it as a whole in a way that I wasn’t personally able to do with Replica.” The effect is not quite sedative – more often stupefying than chill, but more emotional than heady, it’s an album that blissfully gives itself over to the slipperiness of time, trance-like yet intent on helping you sit through it all.
1. For Residue
A pitched-down voice relays the only words we hear on the album, which are right there in the title of the opening track. It seems to frame the album as a celebration of things past, or haphazardly preserved from the drain of ephemerality. The introductory pad is soulful and calm, but all around it varyingly organic sounds swell and woosh and trickle down until Lopatin hits snooze.
2. Bumpy
It made sense for OPN to release the first three tracks as an early preview of Tranquilizer; ‘Bumpy’ seeps pretty directly out of ‘For Residue’ but takes more liberties with its dizzying layers of instrumentation. Though the rhythm never fully settles, glitching out intermittently, there is a pulse for its ethereal tones, from shimmering piano to chimes to reverberant bass, to contract themselves around. The creaking of a door seems to rupture its lush, if jittery, veneer, like a housemate checking if you’re still asleep.
3. Lifeworld
Tranquilizer finds a real groove on ‘Lifeworld’, one that seems to expand towards the cosmic as clicky, incessant percussion guides one of the most blissfully hazy melodies on the album. There is an abundance of life here, tiny when you put it into perspective, and the cloud wafting over it just a small expression of its beauty.
4. Measuring Ruins
The track rests atop soft, humble pads, though not for long enough to bring the record to a lull; the atmospheric field blossoms at lightning speed, leaving you awestruck before cutting itself out.
5. Modern Lust
The track lumbers ominously, and, if we’re to follow the suggestion of the title, seductively, taking its time as it moves between different pleasure spots. The strings and trumpet momentarily heighten the sense of romance, but it’s the blast of a perfectly-pitched synth that really elicits ecstasy. It relishes a bit longer, switching between synth tones as if fine-tuning the hum of desire.
6. Fear of Symmetry
The tentative piano riff on ‘Fear of Symmetry’ implies a few fears besides that of perfect equilibrium. As it gets swallowed up by the digital current, it seems to melt into it rather than crumble. After another shot of climactic bass, the tinny beeping synth sounds almost counterintuitive, cheesy but too pure to be discarded.
7. Vestigel
The torrent of ‘Vestigel’ is more unpredictable than the record’s previous songs, which makes sense as it ventures into a vast, uncompromising middle ground. It gives the impression of sudden displacement, data burning up in the void or a person falling deep into slumber. The human sounds we hear are so jarring because they seem to emanate directly from this subconscious, like sleep talk.
8. Cherry Blue
The pianos are bubbly and opaque at the start, then sharpen as the track settles into an almost reggae pulse, like a mind forced into alertness. The more elements gather around it, the warmer it becomes, until it falls into a different kind of languid trance.
9. Bell Scanner
The prettiness of ‘Bell Scanner’, which starts out like a lullaby, is quickly haunted and abstracted, overtaken by buzzing noise and hyperactive synths. In the world of Tranquilizer, no twinkling sounds can survive for more than a few breaths.
10. D.I.S.
After the relatively unassuming ‘Bell Scanner’, ‘D.I.S.’ is as explosive as ambient music can get, at one point conjuring a sound mirroring that of an operatic voice; in this setting, it’s startlingly emotional. But the emotion struggles to find language: as the track winds down, you almost hear words coming through over plaintive piano, but the message is chopped and distorted, merely confirming someone’s on the other line.
11. Tranquilizer
The title track keeps throwing you off rather than attempting to encapsulate the album’s spirit, more outwardly ominous than most of the material on it. A low rumble tries to relay something over and over; it gets lost in the ether.
12. Storm Show
As Lopatin leans into his most filmic tendencies, technological and weather patterns converge on ‘Storm Show’, whose titular event doesn’t seem to arrive until about halfway through. Swelling synths obliterate everything in their way, giving way to birdcalls and, eventually, a stab of machinery: the cycle repeating.
13. Petro
The track coasts on a two-chord pattern you could almost doze off to; it’s the sonic equivalent of waiting in line, as heard through a mind that converts every beep and chatter into music.
14. Rodl Glide
‘Rodl Glide’ is the only track on Tranquilizer that I can really call soothing – of course, Lopatin himself seems hyper-aware of that characterization, ushering in the most dynamic shift on the record as the second half spirals into a corroded techno rave-up. It says something that he integrates these sensibilities instead of splitting the song in two, and it’s an undeniable standout.
15. Waterfalls
The fact that the album’s two final tracks are also its longest doesn’t sound like a coincidence; Lopatin seems to have reached a point on its journey where the ideas flow undeterred – and unselfconscious about just how sonorous they are. The beauty of ‘Waterfalls’ is obviously natural and winkingly sincere, no longer drifting along the current of time but fully suffused in it. And though there might have been an urge to sleepily draw the album to a close, to have this be the song that finally snaps your eyes shut, it draws attention to every sound – harpsichord, rainsticks, sax – rushing to let the light back in. Muted, weary, relaxed – but never fully dark.
