Lone - Echo Locations EP

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release

4...according to our Ant on Fri 25 Mar, 2011.

I think I must have had my head up my arse to have been so late properly checking out the Lone tracks. Simply not enough hours in the day but I did clock the last album which got me well interested. R&S are hoovering them all up again, just like back in the day as fellow techno heads will well be aware. The labeling on this first clear vinyl pressing has been cocked up i.e. both 12"s have the same labels/tracklisting. Therefore I cannot specify tracks by name but really who gives a shit. What is apparent is that producer Matt Cutler has a/ either been raving for quite a while, b/ studied everything that is euphoric about techno and house or c/ is a total genius. Everything from eternal Chicago and Detroit classics through to 808 State, acid house, bleep, hardcore - the lot are referenced here, yet the overall sound is so much more than a collage of influences, there is striking soul, warmth and spirit emerging from every groove creating something which is both old-skool yet feels fresh and timeless. In many ways this feels like a massive collection of classic early dance tracks has been melted down into molten liquid form and remoulded right here for this generation of bass-bin worshippers.

With Coreshine Voodoo, wunderkind Lone makes his R&S debut and we’re super hyped to have him along for the ride! With these 6 tracks we’ve got a honing of the styles we saw on display on Emerald Fantasy Tracks with a stronger focus on the floors of Detroit & Chicago, which sits so perfectly in the newly invigorated R&S camp. Known to his friends and family as Matt Cutler, Lone started life as a bedroom child producer in Nottingham experimenting with Hip Hop, early 90s Hardcore, Techno and Electronic music for years before dropping his lush, dream-hop début opus 'Lemurian' to critical acclaim. A remix of Bibio for Warp followed, whilst Werk Discs released the follow up album 'Ecstasy & Friends'. Swerving the dream-hop moniker attributed to earlier work, this EP picks up where last year’s stunning album “Emerald Fantasy Tracks“ left off. Distilling so many different ‘labels’ and ‘influences’ into just 9 tracks, EFT explored the heavier sounds of Chicago house & Detroit Techno through to early Warp releases and 90's London rave/hardcore with cinematic overtones. Aimed at destroying parties whilst staying true to his beautiful, nostalgic melodic style essentially. The complex rhythms and drum programming and huge stabs at the drop make Coreshine Voodoo the pick of the tracks for full dancefloor distortion. It’d be just at home in the Motor City as in the steely English North, whilst finding time to jam with the drum machines of Ceephax or Luke Vibert... and yet it’s still so characteristically Lone.

On Explorers we delve deeper into the Detroit flavor drawing up comparisons with Carl Craig and Model 500. With a true understanding of melody that permeates through the track whilst still using the great washes of sound and looped-up, effected vocals this has end-of-nighter written all over it. Further down the line through this stunning EP, Dolphin focuses it’s swathes of sound via a simple but effective synth line with washes of reverbed melody from all sides. The darker bleep core of Rapid Racer reminds me of last summer when Mr. Jeff Mills tore the roof off Space with just his 909. This time though Lone’s managed to sneak a melody in, alongside some off-kilter vocal sample re-imaginings. It’s like all my favourite types of electronic music squeezed into a single track. God knows what he’s making this on but it sounds like it was made in a grimy Detroit warehouse, circa 1984 then rinsed through Castle Morton, on through the legendary Warp rave in Battersea Power Station, back through the Balearic isle and over to the Rotters Golf Club. Blossom Quarter tones thing down briefly with Mr Cutler’s Boards-esque constructions sneaking in, till the Casio-core lets loose. You’re looking for a more complex description but let’s be honest, it’s as if Network Records were have a head on battle with Planet E whilst Boards adjudicated. Approaching Rainbow rounds the EP off into more mellow territories. We need to rest those feet after those first 5 tracks anyway! A truly special EP from a rising star of the further reaches of electronic sonic scopes.