"As you look at the screen, it is possible to believe you are gazing into eternity. You see the things that were inside you. This is the womb, the original site of the imagination. You do not move your eyes from the screen. You have become invisible. The images captivate you, but still you drift off. You can still see every detail clearly, but can't grasp the meaning. Whatever shift in your spiritual life occurs, fragments such as these surface..." The text above is my (incomplete) transcription of the narrative found in the John Rafman-directed video for "Still Life (Betamale)", the penultimate track on R Plus Seven. Obviously these words tie-in nicely with the video's context, but they could serve as a brief description of the Georges Schwizgebel-sourced cover art: the prism gazes into the outside world, unmoved, captivated by the endless blue. The actual visual content of the video (which can be viewed on the Oneohtrix Point Never website) explores the world of the deep web in a series of rather grotesque, fetishistic images, which at first appear in a steady stream before splattering themselves across the screen in a frenzied information overload. These images are quite unnerving on a surface level, but the real horror comes when you realise that somebody out there can extract sexual pleasure from them. What, then, does this have to do with the music contained on the record? More than you'd think. Previous Oneohtrix Point Never albums have seen Dan Lopatin look to the past for his musical inspiration - the synthesiser worship of his first set of releases recalled the ambient soundscapes of Tangerine Dream and Vangelis, while 2011's Replica saw him breathe life into rediscovered commercial detritus. This is where R Plus Seven comes across a little differently to previous releases, in that it deals with the here and the now. Post-human. Post-internet. Life in dystopia. These are the themes that Lopatin is communicating to the listener here, and in this sense the video for "Still Life (Betamale)" becomes a driving force for them. One set of images that flashes before the viewer displays filthy computer set-ups in grotty basements, with little to no lighting, decorum, or any signs of being fit for a human to comfortably reside in. You may think, 'Surely civilised people cannot live this way?', but the fact is that they can, and they do. This is the age of information, wherein content is freely available on the internet; some use this freedom to feed their absurd, twisted fetishes. Do you, as the viewer, recoil in shock at this reality, or do you instead see it as a sign of our times? So, we've established that thematically, R Plus Seven is very much grounded in today. It makes sense that this is reflected in the music - the record amounts to a concise formless void, an assortment of sounds that are no doubt precisely planned and executed, yet still feel random. One word I've seen thrown about to describe Replica is 'meandering', and while the hazy, swooping synths may leave such an impression, it was actually a pretty tightly-composed affair. The tracks were typically built around a single motif, be it a sombre piano loop or the claustrophobic 'Ah!'s of a soda commercial. This isn't quite the case with R Plus Seven, as nothing is so assured. On "He She", the string loop is seemingly abandoned, only to reappear beneath a fragmented vocal cut. Likewise, the second track "Americans" is arranged into distinctive sections in a "Bohemian Rhapsody" or "Paranoid Android" type fashion, with a bubbling synthesiser segueing the first part into the next. The centrepiece "Zebra" juxtaposes a jagged, mangled sample with glossy MIDI presets, before veering off into glistening ambience. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvDzaQOSZ3E The mood of R Plus Seven is never easy to pin down. The aforementioned "Americans" starts out tropical-sounding, evoking a sun-soaked paradise, but elsewhere the album's single (if you could call it that) "Problem Areas" sounds like a distant relative of James Ferraro's Far Side Virtual, in all of its corporate glory and tinny keyboard stylings. "Cyro" could cozy up next to the skipping, pitch-shifting sample treatment of the New Dreams Ltd. artists (Laserdisc Visions, Macintosh Plus, et al.), and "Along" would be a throwback of sorts to the pulsating ambience of Rifts-era Oneohtrix Point Never if it wasn't interspersed with MIDI saxophones. It's an unpredictable experience, but every subsequent play-through of R Plus Seven will reveal a nuance that was previously held out of grasp, enticing the listener to return again and again. What is interesting about the sound of the record is that comes across as light-hearted, almost playful in tone, which is quite a contrast to the themes and ideas that I've touched on earlier in this review. But that's where the real genius of R Plus Seven lies: divorced from concepts, it's still a fantastic listen with a futuristic, otherworldly sound. However, I feel that Lopatin would rather we didn't listen to it this way, and instead use R Plus Seven as a soundtrack to today's Western existence, a manifestation of our uncertain times. The melancholy lies not at musical face value, as it did on the downbeat Replica, but in the narrative it provides. We feel equal amounts of sympathy and disgust for the images featured in the "Still Life (Betamale)" video, and the music is the perfect vehicle for these emotions, right down to the flurry of flashframes as the synths intensify. Lopatin isn't foretelling a dystopian future with R Plus Seven, but is instead showing us where we are right now, and that is a chilling thought indeed.