The Weeknd Joins Oneohtrix Point Never in "No Nightmares" Visual

Oneohtrix Point Never (Daniel Lopatin) and The Weeknd have shared an accompanying music video for their newest collab, “No Nightmares.”

Directed by Lopatin’s long-time collaborator Nate Boyce of Reliquary House, the visual features both artists as abstract avatars that journey through an ethereal CGI dream state. “No Nightmares” follows its predecessor’s themes that “underscores the threads of influence of postmodern art and cult film that course through OPN’s music.”

“Dan initially sent me an excerpt of ‘Fear of the Inexplicable’ by Rilke as a prompt to start working on our idea of a debased animation. Abel and Dan traverse psychoanalytically charged scenarios and spaces that evoke a lurid mix of art and architectural references,” Boyce said in a statement. “Eventually I started to associate the implications of the Rilke poem to the biblical story of the Binding of Isaac, an anxiety inducing story I hated as a kid that became a subtext for the latter half of the piece. Despite the fact that Abraham is thwarted by divine intervention, I was terrified by his incomprehensible zealotry and willingness to sacrifice his own child, who I identified with. This story ensured my eventual atheism, but also my ongoing fascination with how these archaic stories, symbols, and motifs have continued relevance even now, and in many ways still structure our experience. So, as it happens in the animation, this process of individuation through archetypal projection starts with heroic ideations that devolve into anxiety and fear, culminating in a carnivalesque mockery of the faith required to confront these fears.”

Watch Oneohtrix Point Never and The Weeknd’s “No Nightmares” visual above.

Elsewhere in music, The Voidz, Moses Sumney and 박혜진 Park Hye Jin lead the latest installment of Music Projects You Missed This Week.