British producer
Lone (Matt Cutler) has evoked different sets of influences with each of his albums, but he always crafts colorful, energy-charged interpretations of every genre he attempts. Five years after the jungle/breakbeat hardcore-influenced
Levitate, with numerous club-focused singles and archival releases in between,
Lone surfaced on the
Hot Chip-affiliated Greco-Roman label with
Always Inside Your Head, a more song-based effort filled with more ethereal textures than the crisp beats and pastel, bouncy tones he's employed in the past. He hasn't entirely moved away from the hardcore head rush of some of his best work, but here he builds up to more intense sections rather than plunging right in. Opening tune "Hidden by Horizons" is a shapeshifter featuring Morgane Diet's drawn-out vocals and trippy, stop-start breakbeats, resembling a holographic rave in a magical rainforest. The lush, slightly melancholy "Realise" recalls the early days of trance and ambient techno, with haunting vocals dissolving into mist over wistful keyboard melodies and rolling breaks. "Echo Paths" is one of a few songs here that venture into trip-hop, and he covers the smooth yet sturdy breakbeats with a thick, soothing wash of seafoam fuzz, as Diet blissfully reminisces with the line "It brings me back." While some of the album's tracks are somewhere in the neighborhood of ambient house and the more abstract side of
Saint Etienne, "Mouth of God" is a bit more kinetically charged, with racing beats and acid squiggles accelerating under the philosophical samples and shakuhachi calls. "Tree for Tree" also follows simmering pulsations, culminating in an acid fanfare. The album concludes on a surprisingly emotional, tear-filled note with the expansive, fluid ambient elegy "Coming Into Being and Passing Away." The release is a departure from the ecstatic techno and hardcore that
Lone's fans might be expecting, but it's worth giving a chance, as it explores moods that he previously hadn't touched on, and does so with as much care and fascination as his other albums.
Lone always manages to go back in time and see things as they never truly were, and
Always Inside Your Head is an immersive venture into the realm of fantasy and magic. ~ Paul Simpson