When notorious drone-synth explorer Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point

Never) and ex-Tigercity bassist Joel Ford fulfilled a childhood dream late

last year by forming a synth-pop duo, the last thing they imagined would

hamper the project would be a face-tatted ex-affiliate of 50 Cent.

However, on advice from their label the pair have had to lose the Games

moniker that served them so well on last year¹s exceptionally excellent

"That We Can Play" EP. They were told that the Games alias could cause a

stink with Interscope-signed thug-rap aficionado The Game, who has recently

switched to being known as just plain old Game.

We were told Games was a little too close for comfort, bemoans Lopatin over

the phone from his new studio HQ in the bowels of the Mexican Summer complex in Brooklyn, New York. It was kind of a pre-emptive strike to avoid the

legal muscle of Interscope as opposed to us having the guy beat down our

door yelling at us to cease and desist, thank God. That would not have been

good.

With the Games alias cruelly swiped from their paws, Ford and Lopatin have

decided to become known as, well, Ford & Lopatin.

We actually wanted to come up with another band name but nothing felt as

comfortable as Games for me so we figured we might as well just be

ourselves. We're definitely more Kruder & Dorfmeister than Hall & Oates

though.

The pair have plans to take their newly re-named show on the road with a diverse array of gigs in the coming months from chin-stroke-fest Ether in London to hardcore punk-athon Chaos In Tejas in Austin, Texas. Lopatin explains that playing such contrasting shows is “super by design. These days the way people put together a playlist in iTunes or hit shuffle on their iPod prepares them for the experience of seeing two drastically different bands back to back, it’s exciting playing varied bills and reacting to different audiences.”

Along with  freaking out noise fans and punks on a regular basis the duo have a busy release schedule and their own label to run. "Channel Pressure", the highly anticipated Ford & Lopatin long player is due on the seventh of June and Daniel couldn¹t be happier to be releasing it via the duo's own imprint: We see Software more as a production imprint than a label per se. Mexican Summer have some amazing studio facilities in Brooklyn that they have been kind enough to give us the run of to work on both our own material and with other bands. 

After the F&L LP and the next OPN LP we'll initially be focusing on smaller 12-inches and EP releases for folks like Sleepover and Laurel Halo but if the right artists come along we'll be looking to release LPs as well in the future.