Days Of Thunder

Thought I'd fallen behind again but pleased to see that I haven't yet! Going to cover some more obscure OPN side projects this time, I try to keep the ambient to a minimum cos I know it's not everyone's bag but this one in particular has been striking a cord with me at the mo. (2020 edit: apologies for the YT players, this is a pretty obscure release that's nowhere else)

There's only 4 tracks to the Days Of Thunder EP, a collaboration between Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never and Mark McGuire, formerly of Emeralds (though they were still together when this was released). So all in all as you would expect from those names, a pretty solid combination, it wastes no time getting down to early OPN Juno-60 goodness. I adore the bassy backing synths coming in around a minute in, I'm a sucker for the Juno stuff anyway but that is something else.



Mark McGuire's contributions are a little more pronounced on track 2, which is more of a meandering ambient piece in comparison to the synth jam vibes of Flight Simulator, it's a nice contrast to have some acoustic accompaniment to the usual synthetics of OPN's work. It does go off on a Clark-esque distortion kick around halfway through though, and as much as I like that I would love to hear another track in a similar style, the collaboration a little more obvious.



And finally Sky Ramping, given the title you think it'd be a perfect summation of the EP but I don't think so. It's still nice like, the whole structure has a lot in common with another OPN tune called Nest 5900, and McGuire's influence is again not as clear. Still it's nice to hear, the EP as a whole is very nice with nary a weak point on it, it's just a shame that Flight Simulator steals the show so early.



-Claude Van Foxbat