This collaboration between musician Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never) and visual artist Takeshi Murata is one of the best and most congruent marriages of media I have seen in a long time. At this point in the write-up, I would usually support this initial statement with some concrete examples of the parallels I notice, using vague descriptors like “synthetic” and concepts that I only know a small percentage about, words like “futurism” or “singularity.” The problem is, though, the intersections between this song and this video are so seamless, so uncanny, that it is difficult to describe them in words.

There is something that shuns classification in both Lopatin and Murata’s work. Lopatin often gets labeled as someone who works outside of traditional song structure…yet at the same time, the arpeggios in “Problem Areas” are caged in a sort of baroque mathematics. And Murata’s immaculate renderings of reality seem, at moments, sacred…but a McDonald’s soda cup, a cracked iPhone screen, these things are almost painful reminders of our mundane absurdities. There is something mocking, almost satirical, in this joint effort—these ineffable sounds and sights a commentary on our desire to define and categorize. I certainly am noticing the tendency in myself more: even after branding something indescribable, I have now spent an entire paragraph trying to describe it.

“Problem Areas” is a song off of Oneohtrix Point Never’s upcoming album, R Plus Seven, out September 30th via Warp Records.