Before the Little Chubby robot went rogue, before the Pope rode around the US in a Fiat, and before we saw porn stars without makeup, Daniel Lopatin (a.k.a. Oneohtrix Point Never) released a cassette called Chuck Person’s Eccojams Vol. 1, way back in 2010. The hour-long tape saw Lopatin plundering the depths of pop music (Fleetwood Mac, Toto, Heart, etc.) and uncovering short musical segments or particularly existential lyrical moments that he would then loop, pitch-shift, and add echo to, creating a simple yet wholly ecstatic listening experience. The tape eventually led Lopatin to release Replica while also helping to lay the aesthetic groundwork for vaporwave, the style of music we wouldn’t shut up about back in 2012.
Chuck Person’s Eccojams Vol. 1 is now considered a seminal release, with used tapes being sold on Discogs at a median cost of roughly $250 (it sold as high as $400), so we’re happy to see that Lopatin has just released a remastered version of the album. The “official master tape cassette rip” is available now as FLAC or MP3 at OPN’s merch store. (You’ll find hats, shirts, and more music there, too.)
So what about a second volume? Well, aside from the lesser-known A.D.D. Complete box set from 2012, Lopatin said in an AMA interview a few years ago that he has “multiple volumes of eccojams in the cryotank set to defrost in the distant future.”
Watch two official Eccojam videos below, and grab Chuck Person’s Eccojams Vol. 1 while you can, because who knows how long it’ll be before the songs decay on their own/the world ends/you forget about it.