Listen: Lone's '2 Is 8' Blurs Hip-Hop With House And It's Magic

As if the Radiohead story wasn’t enough good music news for one day, Lone is back. ‘Reality Testing’, the follow-up to the astonishing ‘Galaxy Garden’, will be released June 16 on R&S Records. It’s worth celebrating. Coming up around the same time as James Blake, Rustie, Hudson Mohawke, Actress, Illum Sphere, Matt Cutler – who goes by Lone, among other guises – is one of the most creative UK electronic artists to emerge over the last 10 years or so. He splices epically emotional musicality with house, break-beat and hardcore influences, painting with movement, texture and colour.

So what can we expect? ‘Airglow Fires‘ and ‘Begin To Begin‘ stemmed the gap since his last full-length release 2012 and will also be included on the album with 10 brand new tracks. Longtime influences Detroit techno and old Chicago house fed into ‘Reality Testing’ but a hip-hop vibe on new track ‘2 Is 8’ is pretty immediate. The album’s press release quotes Cutler:

That was the real spark – I wanted to make an album that had both hip-hop and house beats, but that weren’t completely different from each other, that shared the same sort of vibe. I love the idea of two things sat side by side, but instead of it seeming like they’re complete opposites, [it’s more that] those two things could almost be the same thing

It’s hip-house but with more in common with De La Soul’s forays or a jazzier Tony Scott and Vitamin C than modern-day Pitbull or Black Eyed Peas. Here’s more by Cutler from the album’s press release:

I see it as like a diary, really, a real document of the last year of making it,” Cutler reflects. “In a lot of the tracks there’s sounds I’ve sampled and recorded of me just being in the studio, and leaving the microphone running – you’re almost in there with me. I wanted it to be a representation of the different moods and emotions that went into making it – just as real and honest as possible

Reality Testing Tracklist:

01. First Born Seconds
02. Restless Cities
03. Meeker Warmer Energy
04. Aurora Northern Quarter
05. 2 is 8
06. Airglow Fires
07. Coincidences
08. Begin To Begin
09. Jaded
10. Vengeance Video
11. Stuck
12. Cutched Under

That was the real spark – I wanted to make an album that had both hip-hop and house beats, but that weren’t completely different from each other, that shared the same sort of vibe. I love the idea of two things sat side by side, but instead of it seeming like they’re complete opposites, [it’s more that] those two things could almost be the same thing

I see it as like a diary, really, a real document of the last year of making it,” Cutler reflects. “In a lot of the tracks there’s sounds I’ve sampled and recorded of me just being in the studio, and leaving the microphone running – you’re almost in there with me. I wanted it to be a representation of the different moods and emotions that went into making it – just as real and honest as possible

Reality Testing Tracklist:

Listen: Lone’s ‘2 Is 8’ Blurs Hip-Hop With House And It’s Magic

Listen: Lone’s ‘2 Is 8’ Blurs Hip-Hop With House And It’s Magic