We’ve all heard the expression “that sinking feeling”. The feeling of a creeping dread tarring up the depths of your gut, slowly making its way northwards to your heart and brain and leaving your whole being infected with a deep, deep gloom. But what if that feeling, didn’t feel awful at all? What if the tar was just the gloop from a lava lamp, and instead of your skin feeling crawly and horrible, you just felt cosy, like you’ve been rolled up in a big ol’ human sized blunt? What if the sinking feeling wasn’t onset by creeping dread, but simply the feeling of falling between the cushions of your couch? Sound good? Well then you should probably get some weed. Moral obligation? Well then listen to this album.

Brooklyn ambient-drone wunderkind Daniel Lopatin aka Oneohtrix Point Never’s latest offering ‘Replica’ is one of the few pieces of evidence supporting the argument that abandoning any kind of traditional song structure and delving deep into the avant-garde can produce an album that is not only listenable, but is downright enjoyable. Opening track ‘Andro’ immediately embraces you in a grizzly fuzz overlapped with gusts of cold synth, making for a track that sounds not unlike I imagine whale song to sound through a Big Muff before giving way to a tribal freakout for the final 15 seconds.

Much of the album continues in this vane of long, drawn out tones and rich, textural undercurrents, with use of patches and synths that in less skilled hands would sound contrived, but when applied with Lopatin’s reservedness and elegant subtlety, come across as the mark of an artist who, in the process of exploring his craft, is finally beginning to master it.

The obvious danger of any experimental album is that in the midst of all the weirdness and exploration it can be all too easy for an artist to abandon the ambition to write music of purpose in favour of almost deliberately convoluted ideas. Thankfully on ‘Replica’ these moments are few and far between. Unfortunately they do occur, such as in the previously mentioned freakout outro to ‘Andro’ and in the intro to ‘Nassau’, providing the album with its weakest moments; the forced harshness betraying the album’s spaced out pathos and momentarily “killing the buzz” as it were.

Undoubtedly the album’s strongest track is the title track and first single ‘Replica’. Opening with a mournful, ghost-of-Nujabes style piano piece; the track is eventually blanketed and smothered in Lopatin’s signature waterfalls of fuzz in what is simply a beautifully understated piece of modern music and one of the brief exposures of the album’s chillwave heart.

Six albums into his career as Oneohtrix Point Never, Lopatin has moved away from the self-indulgence that is so common among experimental musicians towards creation of a carefully considered manifestation of his unique artistic vision in ‘Replica’. And while the album may still be a little unfocused at times and perhaps not as polished as exploratory, electronic contemporaries such as Animal Collective and Flying Lotus, I truly believe it marks the beginning of Lopatin’s rise to becoming one of the most prominent visionary talents in modern alternative music.

This music is not for dancing; it’s for lying down and letting the Earth swallow you. Now, you still got that bag I gave you?