Review: Lone takes you on a sparkle-filled rave journey with Levitate

In one of his shortest albums to date, Matt Cutler, aka Lone, delivers a rave-night-out spurred by a fever dream.

Cutler’s ability to genre switch at the drop of a hat is an all-round talent that is rare, but his influences run clear throughout every record he’s released since 2008. In particular, his 2012 eclectic masterstroke, Galaxy Garden, was so left and right of genre-pigeonholing that it remains the most polished sounding and affirmed record of his career.

Where his 2014, hip-hop inspired record, Reality Testing, saw him take on influences and talk back to his earlier musical offerings, Levitate sees a return to the sometimes-frenetic Galaxy Garden, with rhythms and drums that are ripped directly from raves in the early 90s.

Levitate is hip-hop thrown out and jungle and rave thrown in. Highlighted by the old-school release of the first single “Backtail was Heavy” a track absolutely driven by a heavy breakbeat, and distant string stabs that underpin sparkles that veer in and out of the piece.

The track’s release highlights his approach to honouring rave culture decades ago, as its initial release was through dialing a random number in the UK which had the track playing in all lo-fi quality — a callback to the days of underground raves where advertising your party was conducted through a call through to a landline, rather than posters and the rest.

“Alpha Wheel” opens up the album in a theme-setting tone, with Lone’s wondrous chord progressions, spaced-out synths and junglist-massive drums. Almost all tracks on here are surrounded by the darkness of space and the idea that you could float easily to it all and the wonder of the universe’s sparkle. Cutler says in an interview that the album is inspired totally by his fever dreams during his tour and “Alpha Wheel” is a gorgeous sounding way to start the affair.

Even with drums that move at a million miles an hour, Cutler’s ensures there’s a feeling of colour and energy without being too serious about it (which is most of his work) and that plays nicely into “Triple Helix”, a similar drum and bass inspired number with a laser-guided synth lead, cheeky cowbells and saturated, wonky synth waves punctuating the rest. The energy is relentless, only letting down for a bit of rhythmic flair before blasting out again.

Despite the BPM boost, Cutler still manages to find room in the short offering for things to take a step back and keep us gliding through the clouds. Reminiscent of your drives on Rainbow Road — or any Mario Kart track, really — “Sea of Tranquility” lures you into a false sense of airiness, with rich, cascading pads and a building drum line coupled with delayed claps that breath in and out before the pads open wider and the drum and bass breaks start again. It’s less high energy, but still offers you the air to breath before you thrash it all out one last time.

The album’s closer “Hiraeth” (Welsh for a deep-longing for home) speaks volumes about the journey of the album, as the deep, sparkle-tinged synth-exclusive affair brings it all back down as you walk back home, drenched in sweat, bathing in the warmth of the rising sun as it hits the pavement and horizon.

The album clocks in at a devastatingly taut 33 minutes, but it remains effective at building a rave-night-out narrative through its quick-fire track progression and the cloudy, mystifying soundscapes that infect every nook and cranny.

It does make me wonder, however, what else he could have carved out and added in, but the sum of the album’s parts are so rich with colour, energy and a more personal story that the run time is an afterthought when you’re tuning into something that honours the past and looks to the future so well.