It took me a while to warm to Lone's excellent 2010 LP, Emerald Fantasy Tracks. It's not that the album's charms were particularly subtle, it's that I had no idea where Lone fit in the evolving, chatty conversation that is electronic music. EFT's influences were certainly clear enough: late-1990s Warp beatniks like Boards of Canada and Plaid; Detroit techno; the lite-rave thrum of 808 State. For the first time in his career, Lone had combined them in a way that seemed both clever and obvious. He wasn't so interested in interacting or responding to his peers, but he wasn't sulking in the corner, either: more like industriously building his own fort in it.
Echolocations is a six-song EP that feels very much like an extension of EFT. It's natural that, finally having exacted a sound of his own, he would want to refine it. On the whole Echolocations is quicker and more aggressive than his past work, though I'd hesitate to call it more dance-oriented. Lone used to trade in Dilla-style breakbeats, but his drum programming has grown more complex as his tracks have gained steam. Echolocations features his most detailed, strident work to date. Lone fills an impressive amount of space with his percussion. Far from the sparse, digital grooves that dominate techno, Lone organizes his rhythms into flowing streams of hi-hats and snares, interrupting them only to occasionally release his twirling synths upward.
Lone has always had a way with keyboard melodies-- it's the Warp influence-- and Echolocations sounds busy, as if his superior drums are trying to ring his superior synths, and vice-versa. The opening track, "Coreshine Voodoo" is like watching two cats fight: lots of tussling with no one looking to deliver the killer blow. He smartly contrasts this with leaning, pulsing organ sounds that function more as stabilizing forces than melodic ones.
Echolocations doesn't have the breadth of Emerald Fantasy Tracks, but it's probably not supposed to. It plays like an annex to that album, offering a slight, specific variant. But the strength of Echolocations isn't that it offers variety, just that it offers more. EFT was a coming-of-age, and Echolocations is proof that Lone is crafty enough to build upon it without abandoning his new-found identity.
