Stephen Mejias

The signal returns to the">http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/022706romance/">the source.

In bed the night before last, images of large and heavy loudspeakers carefully maneuvered into their old shipping cartons and up the narrow flight of stairs from JA's listening room, around a tight bend made tighter by piles of shoes and other things, and up another flight into a hall separating dining room from living room. One heavy step at a time, carefully.

Returnal (Editions Mego EMEGO 104), the fourth full-length release from Oneohtrix Point Never, explodes into the listening room (or out from the speakers or out from the headphones) with real violence and penetrating force. We are thrust into a heavy storm, a maelstrom; we find ourselves standing beneath an ocean of falling glass, falling sky, falling electronic haze. If instruments could scream, their screams might sound like this, like the opening few moments of Returnal, moments that don’t seem like an opening at all, but someplace else, some other time that escaped us, that started without us, before we were ready. I don’t mean scream in the way that guitars and saxophones and other instruments can and do scream. I mean that if instruments could be dealt such pain that they were brought to life, given sentience, to wail with wonderful suffering, it might sound like this, like the opening few moments of “Nil Admirari.”

I've been listening for fun. With fun in mind, I mean. And it has been fun. I find myself, sitting there, chasing the sounds across the space in between the speakers. My eyes racing, images forming left and right, too much for me to keep up with.

It's almost a shame. There's room for only one.

I have no idea how thishttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/technology/03music.web.html?hp">this<…; is going to impact the world of digital music.

I've heard some of the guys — John Atkinson, Wes Phillips, Art Dudley — talk about a certain feeling. It's a strange kind of, mildly irrational, but altogether real, bit of sadness topped off with a touch of guilt and/or regret that sneaks up on the audio reviewer when the time comes to return a piece of gear to its manufacturer.