Even while away from the frontlines of modern experimental music, producing for pop megastar The Weeknd, Brooklyn-based Daniel Lopatin never rests. Again, however, is his first regular studio album since the conceptual, psychedelic pop excursions of 2020’s Magic Oneohtrix Point Never – and a very different beast.

Lopatin’s tenth LP is his most sprawling, grandiose statement yet, and, in short, utterly terrific. It’s an adrenaline-fuelled tornado of harmony and noise, order and chaos, light intermingling with dark and refracting out into brilliant rainbows. Electronics and orchestration are strewn to the wind, an almighty force that converges, fragments, then converges again. Lurid soundscapes and hazy vocal layers explode into moments of incendiary bliss, a kinetic, roller-coaster-like flow that envelops and mesmerises the receptive listener. The album shines more as a holistic experience than in any of its individual pieces, ebbing and flowing across its generous runtime like one electronic symphony. Tracks like Elseware, The Body Trail and Ubiquity Road focus on rich textures and pensive atmospheres to accentuate these moments of frantic release: World Outside with its giddy rush of warped, synthesised crescendos and cavernous 80s percussion, Memories of Music’s video game-like bombast, and the arresting, heady finale of A Barely Lit Path, to name but a few highlights.

For all the loftiness of labels such as ‘experimental’ or ‘IDM,’ the true appeal of Again, underneath its abstract textures and retrofuturist weirdness, is the sheer visceral thrill it provides. Lopatin has created an overwhelming, symphonic sound-world with this record, but also one that is incredibly human at its core.