Bleep

Lone, the longstanding moniker of Nottingham-based producer Matt Cutler, continues living up to his stage name with a singular approach to mingling a myriad of influences ranging from drum & bass, shoegaze, and hip-hop.

2021’s Always Inside Your Head signalled a sea change for Lone, introducing vocalist Morgane Diet into the fold along with holding up the works of My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, and William Orbit’s run of hits in the ‘90s as his personal gospel. While Always Inside Your Head wasn’t a full-on attempt at replicating Kevin Shields’ guitar-mangling walls of sound, Cutler did capture the era’s fixation with ethereal production and occasional flirting with club-worthy aspirations.

The EP’s title track leads off with a massive departure from the source material, completely overhauling the already-punchy ‘Mouth of God’ into even more propulsive territory with jungle-indebted breakbeats atop its trance-y framework. ‘Inlove2 (One Thirty Mix)’ also ups the intensity, kicking up the BPM and turning Always Inside’s centrepiece track into an acid house workout. The EP’s biggest head-turner though is courtesy of SHERELLE, who delivers a mammoth rework of ‘Visited By Astronauts’ as her first officially released remix. Finding new ground with an ambient interlude that runs under two minutes is already an impressive feat, but SHERELLE conjures delirious footwork out of ‘Astronauts’ while honouring the original’s breathy ambience.

EP closer ‘Echo Paths Ebb And Flow’ pulls a 180 to close out Natural Aerials on an ethereal set-closing high, showing the joy left to be wrung from the album’s genre-playfulness. ‘Echo Paths Ebb And Flow’ strips ‘Echo Paths’ down almost completely, turning a downtempo highlight into ambient euphoria with just its crystalline synths left intact as a guide back to earth.

Natural Aerials features four reworks of 'Always Inside Your Head' tracks that more heavily pay mind to the dancefloor without sacrificing an ounce of the amniotic dreamlike quality the originals hold.