Oneohtrix Point Never - Magic Oneohtrix Point Never (2LP) - Yellow Transparent Vinyl

Magic Oneohtrix Point Never landed on 30 October 2020 via Warp, and it still feels like tuning a radio at 2 am when the world goes a bit unreal. Daniel Lopatin has always treated the airwaves like a memory palace, but this one circles back to the origin story. His stage name riffs on Boston soft rock station Magic 106.7, and here he builds a whole imaginary broadcast around it. You get station IDs, little blips of chatter, and those gauzy transitions he calls Cross Talk, so the record plays like a mutating dial scan that keeps finding new worlds just off frequency.

It’s also one of his most collaborative sets. Caroline Polachek floats through Long Road Home, her voice braided with Lopatin’s into something glassy and yearning. The Weeknd shows up on No Nightmares, and he’s credited as an executive producer too, which fits. The two had been working together around that time, and you can hear some shared DNA in the way Lopatin frames pop songwriting with a strange, woozy halo. Nolanberollin bolts into The Whether Channel with a deadpan verse that snaps the dream wide awake, which is exactly the trick this album keeps pulling. It seduces you into a soft-focus memory, then flicks the light on.

Auto & Allo is the welcome message, all prismatic keys and pitch-bent voices that feel part hymn, part TV ident. I Don’t Love Me Anymore is a curveball that still makes me grin. Lopatin leans into fuzzed guitars and a brittle hook, like a rock song beamed in from a half-remembered music video. Lost But Never Alone has that same daylight shimmer, the kind of track that could fool you into thinking it’s a classic you once taped off FM and then wore the cassette out. The sequencing keeps you moving between intimacy and theatre. One minute it’s a private confessional, the next you’re in a neon-lit lobby in 1989 with a muzak version of your feelings drifting from a ceiling speaker.

What makes it stick is the craft. Lopatin is a magpie, but he’s not sentimental about it. The textures feel lived-in yet sharp, like someone buffed an old chrome radio until it reflects a new skyline. He pulls from synth pop, new age, soft rock, rap, left-field ambient, and then sets it all in a radio drama that never turns kitsch. The Cross Talk cuts aren’t just skits. They’re editing choices that control your sense of time and place, a reminder that the whole thing is a broadcast with a fallible human at the desk.

No Nightmares is the emotional centre. The Weeknd’s voice is feather-light here, and Lopatin cushions it with sighing harmonies and tiny rhythmic hiccups that make the lyric feel frail and human. Long Road Home is a favourite for the opposite reason. Polachek and Lopatin sound like they’re phasing in and out of the same daydream, not quite touching, and when the beat settles it feels like a promise kept. The Whether Channel earns its turn, pivoting into grit just as the station might switch formats after midnight.

Critics heard it too. The album drew broad praise on release, with Pitchfork tagging it Best New Music and The Guardian handing it strong marks. It reads as a key chapter for him, a bridge between the fractured collages of R Plus Seven and Garden of Delete and the more overt pop entanglements that followed. If you came in through the Uncut Gems score or through The Weeknd, this is a generous place to settle in and understand how he works.

If you’re crate-digging in a Melbourne record store or trawling vinyl records Australia late at night, the Magic Oneohtrix Point Never vinyl pressing is the way to experience it. The side breaks make narrative sense, and those sweeping fades bloom on wax. It’s also an easy recommendation if you’re trying to buy Oneohtrix Point Never records online and want one that shows his range without losing the plot. There are plenty of Oneohtrix Point Never albums on vinyl worth grabbing, but this one feels like the cleverest doorway into his world. Consider it a phantom station that keeps finding you, even when you’re not looking, and a reminder that the static between songs can say as much as the chorus. And if you’re simply searching Oneohtrix Point Never vinyl to see where to start, this broadcast is still live.