INTERVIEW: Lone's Magic Wire

Matt Cutler’s debut album as Lone introduced him to the record buying public in fine style, documenting the sound of a surf infused summer on a fantasy isle; and the Lemurian album was the first insight a lot of people got into his world of choppy synths and heated drum patterns. His sophomore effort, Ecastacy & Friends was snapped up by Actress for his Werk Disc’s imprint, an act that proved Cutler’s super stylistic productions had legs outside of the journalist imposed confines of the ‘wonky’ boom.

Having just announced details of his new label, Magic Wire – home to a new breed of Lone productions aimed a little closer to the dancefloor, pumping constantly with classic drum machine breaks whilst swathed in his unique approach to samples and melodies on his first 10”, ‘Pineapple Crush’ b/w ‘Angel Brain’ - Sonic Router caught up with him to get the low down on where he’s at right now, what his plans are with the label and a little more besides...

Sonic Router: What’s the ethos behind the Magic Wire label? More of an outlet for you to do non hip hop stuff or…?

Lone: At the moment it's just an easy way to get as much of my music out as possible, just because I’ve got so much on the go. I'm not consciously using it as an outlet for any other style or genre, it's just that I’m well into writing more club friendly music at the moment. I'll probably put out some more hip hop stuff at some point, but for now we're gonna put out my house tracks and just kinda see where that takes us.

Have you got releases slated from other artists?

Not right now… It’s just an outlet for my new shit at the moment, but I’d love to sign a bunch of other artists further down the line. I've got loads of people in mind actually; I guess it's just a case of whether they're tied to other labels or if they actually wanna work on some shit. Definitely wanna put a Keaver & Brause record out at some point 'cause I know he's working on a bunch of stuff that would be perfect...

Who’s doing the artwork for it?

My long time friend and collaborator Andy Hemsely; he did the first couple of Lone sleeves and works under the name The Fresh Prints. I've got a strong idea of how I want things to look so it's real easy to just explain to him what I see in my head and he just comes out with stuff that's actually better. He's really busy though, so I’ve got to constantly think of new ways to bribe him into doing new shit... I think he's down for most ideas though.



The first release has your signature synth work stamped all over it, are you approaching these new tempos of tracks differently to the stuff that came out on Werk?

I guess so, but I really don't think too much into it like that. I always work as instinctively as possible, so it's a case of just being bored of working within a hip hop tempo at the moment. I've been doing hip hop beats since I was like, 16 (?) and I’ve always been into early house and techno so I’m just having loads of fun discovering loads of old records and getting totally inspired.

Playing shows has influenced me a lot recently too... I used to be all about making music for home listening, or to soundtrack certain surroundings, but spending so much time at parties has rubbed off a lot. Like, how things sound in a club, and a reaction from a crowd has certainly influenced the tempo. I think whatever my 'signature' sound is, in terms of the synths or atmosphere or whatever is something beyond my control to be honest...

Were you inspired by the reaction Ecstacy & Friends got?

I really tried to not read much about that album, 'cause when the first album came out I was pretty naive and read loads of shit which kinda messed me up; even the positive stuff was unhealthy because when I was working on that first record I wasn’t signed to any label so I had no outside opinions or influence from anyone other than friends. After that, I kinda had people’s expectations (however limited that was) in the back of my head while I was working, which made the whole process a lot harder. Obviously though, it's always nice to hear from people that they liked it or whatever, and it really does mean a lot... I just didn’t want to get too involved, if you know what I mean?

Totally. When something is so personal, to have someone shit all over it hurts. It sounds like your taking different reference points from your previous material – would you say that’s a fair point? That your style is consciously morphing into something a bit more club orientated?

Yeah definitely. My stuff's still heavily based on nostalgia. It's almost as if 'Lemurian' was inspired by sounds I was hearing from the late 70's and early 80's through movies and TV - and hip hop; 'Ecstasy & Friends' was weird pop music I was hearing when I was in my pre-teens and what I’m doing now is inspired by the first music I actively took an interest in, hardcore and house.

What else have you got coming up?

The 'Once In A While' and 'Raptured' 12" for Werk will be out real soon, and I’ve just finished the second Magic Wire release which will be an EP to hopefully come out around October…

‘Pineapple Crush’ b/w ‘ Angel Brain’ will be out on Magic Wire soon. For audio clips go here.

Links:
www.magicwirerecordings.com
www.myspace.com/lonemusic

RECOMMENDED: Actress - Splazsh [Honest Jon’s]

Thanks to Splazsh, I’ve just been reminded that it’s definitely possible to listen to a record too much before starting to review it. In the case of Darren Cunningham’s stunning second Actress full-length, the first for the Honest Jon's label, each repetition reveals hundreds of tiny details that previously managed to slip by unnoticed. Each one of these creates a separate strand of thought, and before long the mind’s struggling to try and weave every thread together into something that resembles a remotely coherent argument.

As a whole entity, what Splazsh shares with Actress' deliciously grainy debut Hazyville is its heady, self-contained quality. Cunningham’s music still sounds entirely unconcerned with the wider world outside the tight confines of its own headspace, possessed of an almost pathologically introspective bent that only begins to open up once you relax your focus and allow it to creep in. The musical equivalent of a magic eye picture then: the less you look, the more you see.

The lead track of his recent single, ‘Paint, Straw & Bubbles’ was a pretty prime example of that aesthetic. Like a jewel on display in a museum case, it appeared different from every angle, as light glinted off each facet of its surface. The nearer you got, the more frustratingly impenetrable it became – until you stopped paying such close attention and the entire thing suddenly began to make sense. With his new full-length Cunningham has picked up where that track left off and expanded his horizons even further. Actress circa-2010 has retained Hazyville’s claustrophobic feel and disconcerting habit of ending tracks at what sound like randomly calculated points and as such as it feels irrelevant to compare the two records, where his first album was a series of study sketches, Splazsh fully develops its ideas into something approaching a finished piece.

Now this is the part where I struggle to construct a reasonable summary of thoughts. It’s not quite enough to say that Splazsh has floored me - though it has, I’ve been lost in its maze-like spaces for the last few weeks and still feel as though I’ve barely scratched the surface. Its sustained mood is so well-realised that even the album’s shortest and seemingly inconsequential tracks take on an eerie physical presence. The two-minute long ‘Senorita’ drifts in mid-way, as though the needle’s been dropped onto a tiny section of a far longer track, but the way its blurred vocals seem to bleed into the shredded synthwork of ‘Let’s Fly’ gives both tracks a convincing sheen of hyper-reality.

The longer tracks (and there’s a lot of them) are stunningly composed. ‘Lost’ is the finest bit of techno-not-techno I’ve heard in a very long time, its masterful build sustained over a tension-wracked four minutes before everything drops out for a second, then unleashes. The female voices that haunt its darkened spaces are almost terrifyingly lonely, summoning the same spirit of unreal nostalgia as Millie & Andrea’s recent music. ‘Get Ohn (Fairlight Mix)’ might just be even better, grinding along behind an insistent fuzz of radio noise that’s as reminiscent of Broadcast & The Focus Group’s excellent Witch Cults Of The Radio Age as it is of any UK dance music.

In some ways it’s quite amusing that despite often being categorised alongside his contemporaries as part of the ‘bass music’ spectrum, Actress’ music is frequently devoid of the stuff. In any case, Splazsh really doesn’t need it. It’s elusive without being austere or impenetrable, complex without being IDM-ish and stubbornly refuses to land in any genre bracket, as reminiscent of recent synth-heavy albums by the likes of Oneohtrix Point Never and Emeralds as it is of techno, electro, dubstep, whatever. It’s just Actress music, and it’s almost unbelievably great.

Words: Rory Gibb
Out: Now

Links:
werkrecords.blogspot.com

RECOMMENDED: Actress - Paint, Straw & Bubbles/Maze [Honest Jon’s] & Machine & Voice EP [Nonplus+]

In advance of his eagerly awaited (from these quarters at least) second album Splazsh, Werk boss and enigmatic beat-chemist Darren Cunningham has just released a pair of beguiling 12”s under his Actress moniker. You can recognise an Actress track from a mile off - even though his more recent material displays a greater willingness to experiment than his magical Hazyville album - Cunningham’s music is defined by an instantly familiar sense of place. Tracks like ‘I Can’t Forgive You’ and sub-heavy house workout ‘Crushed’ exude a peculiar phosphorescent glow, their intensity heightened by an almost unbearable claustrophobia that presses inward as though the walls themselves are drawing nearer.

Similarly, both of the tracks on his first release for Honest Jon’s wrap themselves tightly around the listener while hinting at wide-open spaces just beyond the music’s confines. It’s a delicate balancing act – ‘Paint, Straw and Bubbles’ is almost impenetrably austere, its hypnotic spiral patterns so abstract that listening feels more like a feat of voyeuristic pleasure than one of physical connection. This distance only serves to enhance its atmosphere of deep-seated unease. ‘Maze (Long Version)’ on the flip offers more immediate gains, as thick bass frequencies and sparse electronic percussion generate a beautifully languid piece of stoned techno that seems far shorter than its six-minute runtime.

While the ‘Paint, Straw and Bubbles’ 12” offers curiously timeless artefacts, his plate for Instra:mental’s Nonplus+ label betrays its dance music lineage far more directly. ‘Machine & Voice’ does exactly what it says on the tin, playing an industrially rigid drum machine beat off against chopped ‘n’ sliced vocals. About halfway through, a woozy drift of melody, ripped straight from Flying Lotus’ ‘Parisian Goldfish’ school of sleaze, punctures the track’s heart for an all too brief few seconds before submerging again. ‘Loomin’ ratchets up the tension further, drowning a skeletal beat in waves of found sound and police sirens fading into the distance, and ‘Und U Boat’ is simply sublime, its lethargic hip-hop pace offset by the kind of aquatic melody that Highpoint Lowlife’s 10-20 has been making his own as of late.

What remains so intriguing about Actress’ music, despite its occasionally impenetrable exterior, is its constant sense of exploration. Just as he completely deconstructed Joy Orbison’s peak-time wonder ‘The Shrew Would Have Cushioned The Blow’ to leave only its trace elements behind, he displays a defiantly unconventional bent on this collection of new tracks. Never staying still for a moment, and as in thrall to the cool mechanical motion of Throbbing Gristle and This Heat as to the UK dance music he is usually associated with, Cunningham remains an artist happy to work outside any confining notions of genre or scene. If these are anything to go by, Splazsh should be fascinating, unsettling and chilling in equal measure.

Words: Rory Gibb
Out: Now & Now

Link:
www.myspace.com/actresskhz

DOWNLOAD: Lone - FACT Mix

Nottigham beatmaker, Lone, was one of the first batch of people I properly interviewed in the ol' 3 Bar Fire days, and since I've been trying to locate the page - with no success I might add - in the hazy directory of the hastily backed up archive ZIP before the editorial side of the site went offline all those months back, it would appear the latest installment in the FACT mix series is pretty well timed.

Lone makes shimmer-hop like no one else. Enjoy it.

DOWNLOAD: Lone - FACT Mix

Tracklist:

Kona Triangle – Mauna Loa
Ghostface Killah – Clipse of Doom
Samiyam – Cheesecake Backslap
Bibio – Lovers Carvings (Letherette Mix)
Mike Slott – SunTan
Black Dog Productions – Caz
Prophet – You Really Turn Me On
Prince – Erotic City
Lone – Once in a While
Sweet Exorcist – Track Jack
Lone – Taking off and Landing
Ceephax Acid Crew – Space Paranoia
Clark – Cremation Drones

Also - Lone gave a free track out to the URB.com readership recently; you can hop on that sheeeeeeeeit here:

DOWNLOAD: Lone - Once In A While

Link:
www.myspace.com/lonemusic

PRE-ORDER: Lone - Ecstasy & Friends [Werk Discs]

Lone's sophomore album, 'Ecstasy & Friends,' is out now on Actress' Werk Discs imprint; a superlative follow up to his 'Lemurian' album released on Dealmaker Records last year.

Read the full review here: http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=6920

Link:
www.myspace.com/lonemusic

DOWNLOAD: Lukid - Everybody Make Happy

Lukid has quietly unleashed a free track (via twitter and his myspace blog) called 'Everybody Make Happy,' which is reportedly pre 'Onandon,' his rapturous debut album for Werk Discs; which partly inspired me to write this artist profile a while back.

DOWNLOAD: Lukid - Everybody Make Happy

Link:
www.myspace.com/lukid

EVENT: Back To The Wood @ Gramaphone

This Saturday, East London's Gramaphone plays host to Lone, John Daly and Joy Orbison - pusher of one of the most hyped tracks of the moment, 'Hyph Mngo,' which we can confirm has been scheduled for an early September release on Hotflush with 'Wet Look' on the flip.



Familiarise yourself with the Back To The Wood people and what they do by delving into their podcasts:

http://www.backtothewood.com/BTTW/PODCAST_/PODCAST_.html

with entries from TAKE, 1000 Names, Mono/Poly and Actress amongst others...

PLUS: We've kindly been given a pair of tickets to giveaway.

Email us the answer to the question below to win.

Lone's debut album Lemurian was released on which label?

A) Dealmaker Records
B) Dealbreaker Records
3) Dealshaker Records

Winners will be announced on Thursday. Please ensure you can attend before entering.

Link:
www.backtothewood.com

DOWNLOAD: Lukid - Ballers Mix

Lukid is playing the hallowed space of the Ballers Social Club (Lucky Me's club night) up in Glasgow on August 14th, and to commerate the appearance he's put together a mix, which we happily stumbled across via the Werk Discs twitter.

DOWNLOAD: Lukid - Ballers Mix

Also you can read a profile article someone you might be quite familiar with wrote on Lukid here:
http://www.fabriclondon.com/fabricfirst/blog/artist-profile-lukid

Link:
www.myspace.com/lukid