Gig review: Oneohtrix Point Never, Glasgow Berkeley Suite

Recently inaugurated Glasgow scenester den Berkeley Suite, a hole in the wall facing on to the M8 with a spectacular basement room resembling an art deco brothel, was the ideal location for music as sublimely challenging as this.

The sole project of Brooklyn electronic musician Daniel Lopatin, Oneohtrix Point Never isn’t a project steeped in attention-grabbing stagecraft – instead, one man, a laptop and a slow-flowing digitised backdrop were all we had to make sense of.

In truth this wasn’t one for the “modern music’s all just noise” crowd, being a swirling, suggestive series of transmissions from the upper atmosphere, a satellite-chattering palette of ambient noises, trembling sampled bass burps and fragmented, non-lyrical vocal loops. It was truly delightful in places, for example as Lopatin pulled hissing synthesised shapes over a bed of swirling, somnambulant piano and ethereal female voice, and wilfully challenging in others, pushing rhythmic patterns to lacerating extremes. For those with an open mind and ear the effect was of a rich, modernist soundtrack to the imagination, well-suited to this dreamscape of a venue in the absence of a Ridley Scott dystopia to score.

The crowd listened patiently, lost in their own thoughts, and Lopatin appeared to be on some kind of voyage himself, eyes closed and head nodding along to the subtlest chime of a beat picking its way through his music. What music it was, striking in a way which updates the ambient experience to reflect the reference points of the contemporary electronic scene – although as a live experience it really needed more buying into than most.

Rating: ****