Games (band)

Ford & Lopatin
Ford (R) and Lopatin in 2010
Background information
Also known as	Games
Genres	Electronic, synthpop
Years active	2009 (2009)–present
Labels	Hippos in Tanks Software Recording Co.
Associated acts	Oneohtrix Point Never Tigercity Airbird
Members	Joel Ford Daniel Lopatin

Ford & Lopatin (formerly known as Games) is an American synthpop duo composed of electronic musician Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never) and Joel Ford of the group Tigercity.

First meeting each other in sixth grade at a science class in a Wayland, Massachusetts school, Daniel Lopatin and Joel Ford listened to music from British artist Goldie, Boston campus radio, and jazz fusion albums owned by Lopatin's father during their teen years. While in sixth grade, Lopatin had tried out for being a bassist in Ford's grunge band, The Grainers, but was rejected. However, the band started to create and perform funkier, weirder and more prog-fusion material, and by the time they were in their late high school years, Ford said the group "couldn't exist without Dan and his synthesizer."

When the two were 15 years old, they began a group called Polyphonic, with Ford using their high school's Ensoniq SQ-2 as a drum machine and Lopatin using a Roland Juno-60 synthesizer. The two recalled jamming in Lopatin's basement and performing at their high school's talent show with other rappers and a DJ. During this period, the two became serious about composing electronic music together.

The band ended when Ford and Lopatin graduated from high school. However, the two still kept in touch with each other during their college years, Ford attending University of Massachusetts Amherst and Lopatin a student at Hampshire College, and would briefly form another band that Ford described as "kind of like Suicide, but with live drums." Lopatin had started making music in his bedroom which was the beginning of his project Oneohtrix Point Never, whom Ford was with in one of Lopatin's first of these sessions which Ford described as "one of the purest listening experiences I've ever had." Ford would move to Brooklyn to form Tigercity after college, where he lived to do the project for six years.

In the summer of 2009, they developed an idea for a group they called "Games" after what Lopatin described as "an intense 72-hour internet writing frenzy." They spent a week recording demos at Ford's home in Massachusetts, developing their sound using "a ridiculously sick collection of vintage synths" the two had collected during their years as musicians. Other musical commitments slowed the work, but by February 2010, the two had moved into an apartment that lacked heat and hot water so they could focus on the project.