Live at Culturgest, April 2026
Saw Daniel Lopatin — Oneohtrix Point Never — at Culturgest presenting Tranquilizer, his newest record. The timing is the strange part: I’d been listening to Tranquilizer on repeat when the Marty Supreme soundtrack came out, so the same composer was suddenly arriving from two directions at once — the abstract solo record on headphones, and the curated ‘80s-pop-meets-experimental-OST work on a cinema screen. Seeing him live finally pulled both threads into the same room.
French digital artist Freeka Tet handled the visuals: nature documentaries, pixelated natural phenomena, and heavily processed renderings of buildings, alternating between the stage backdrop and a live-filmed miniature set. The Poltergeist-style juxtaposition felt right for music that’s always been about memory and corruption.
The Setlist (and What It Means)
The show drew mostly from Tranquilizer and R Plus Seven (2013), with a few revisits and a glitchy “Replica” (from the 2011 album of the same name) as the encore. Tracks the review at Comunidade Cultura e Arte singles out:
- “Cryo” — visuals dominated, music receded into texture
- “Measuring Ruins” — the inverse: music took over completely
- “Cherry Blue” — synthesizers paired with an orange sunset reflected in the sea, almost blinding
- “Storm Show” — rain-evoking sounds and stroboscopic lighting simulating lightning
- “Power of Persuasion” — revisited
- “Mutant Standard” (from Garden of Delete) — accelerated, sinister, leaning into techno
- “Replica” — encore, glitched-out
Bernardo Crastes puts it well: Lopatin’s music creates “direct connections to memories we rarely access.” That’s the trick — it sounds unfamiliar but feels remembered.
Tranquilizer in Context: A Quick Career Map
OPN’s discography is its own kind of mind map, and Tranquilizer lands as a return to the experimental looseness of the early/mid records after a long detour through pop and film:
- Replica (2011) — sample-based, melancholic, the album that made the case for OPN as a serious composer rather than a vaporwave footnote
- R Plus Seven (2013) — first record on Warp; granular, cathedral-like, the synthesis of his sample work into a full sonic language
- Garden of Delete (2015) — abrasive, mutant, a corrupted nü-metal/teenage-internet fever dream
- Age Of (2018) — harpsichords, MIDI, James Blake — the pop pivot
- Magic Oneohtrix Point Never (2020) — radio-station concept album, his most accessible record
- Again (2023) — orchestral, autobiographical, looking backwards
- Tranquilizer (2026) — the live show framed it as a “return to the captivating experimentation” of R Plus Seven and Replica, which tracks: the textures are denser, the structures less song-shaped, the mood more dissociative
In parallel, the soundtrack work has become its own discography: Good Time (2017), Uncut Gems (2019), and now Marty Supreme (2026) — all with the Safdie brothers (Josh Safdie solo for Marty Supreme). This is where the headphones-and-cinema collision happens.
The Marty Supreme Coincidence
It’s a funny moment to have Daniel Lopatin and the OPN project landing in Lisbon right now — Marty Supreme is in cinemas and has been genuinely popular, so the same composer is arriving from two directions at once: the abstract solo album on Culturgest’s stage, and the film score people are encountering in theatres across the city.
The Soundtrack Paradox
Despite Marty Supreme being set in the 1950s, the soundtrack bursts with 1980s classics — New Order, Peter Gabriel, Tears For Fears. This anachronistic choice creates a tension between visual period authenticity and sonic modernity. The juxtaposition runs three ways:
- Lopatin’s experimental OST work
- The curated ’80s pop selections
- The film’s ’50s setting
A three-way temporal collision that defines the film’s sonic identity.
Notable Soundtrack Moments
The Car Dance Scene — style reminiscent of “It’s Friday then…”, scored with “The Fat Man” by Fats Domino. A spontaneous moment that breaks from the period setting.
Holocaust Honey — the track that returns around Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow). It sits much closer to the Tranquilizer aesthetic than to the soundtrack’s pop choices, which is part of why those scenes feel like they belong to a different film altogether.
Gwyneth Paltrow Scenes — The Intensity
Every scene Kay Stone appears in is sonically marked. Lopatin has specifically said that all the songs surrounding her character are particularly special and carefully chosen — the music creates a distinct atmosphere that sets her scenes apart from the rest of the film. The intimate hotel suite scene is the clearest example: the room narrows, the air thickens, and the score does most of the work — Holocaust Honey doesn’t underline the intensity, it is the intensity. The licensed ’80s pop tracks may carry the rest of the film’s energy, but in Kay Stone’s orbit it’s pure Lopatin, and that’s where the film gets quietly devastating.
→ Watch Daniel Lopatin discuss the soundtrack
Standing in Culturgest watching the Tranquilizer set, this is the part of the OST that makes the most sense in retrospect. The same compositional instincts — corrupted memory, half-remembered melodies, sounds that feel like they’re decaying in real time — are what give Kay Stone’s scenes their gravity. The OST isn’t trying to compete with “True Faith” or “Sledgehammer”; in Paltrow’s scenes it doesn’t have to.
Abel Ferrara as the Dog Mafia Guy
Abel Ferrara shows up in the film as “the dog mafia guy” — a B-movie director known for edgy, provocative cinema (Pasolini, with Willem Dafoe, among others). His presence adds another layer of meta-textual meaning to the film: a director who has spent decades operating at the rough edges of American cinema cast as a small-time menace in Josh Safdie’s most polished film yet.
Artist: Oneohtrix Point Never (Daniel Lopatin) Album: Tranquilizer Performed: Culturgest, Lisbon, April 2026 Visuals: Freeka Tet Review reference: Bernardo Crastes — Comunidade Cultura e Arte
Key connections:
- Marty Supreme OST (2026) — Lopatin scored Josh Safdie’s film; same composer, completely different sonic register
- Safdie brothers collaborations — Good Time (2017), Uncut Gems (2019), Marty Supreme (2026)
- Holocaust Honey (Kay Stone / Gwyneth Paltrow scenes) — closest Marty Supreme OST track to the Tranquilizer aesthetic
- R Plus Seven (2013) — heavily revisited live; the album Tranquilizer most resembles
- Freeka Tet — visual collaborator, French digital artist