DJ-Kicks (Lone) [DJ Mix]

The DJ mix typically fulfills a number of roles in the modern musical jigsaw: It can serve as a showcase for the DJ’s mixing talents, a compendium of the latest tunes, or simply the soundtrack to a good hard dance. Lone’s entry into the venerated DJ-Kicks series, his first commercial mix CD, doesn’t really do any of these. What it does do, though, is far more interesting, guiding us into the singular sonic universe of Nottingham-born producer Matt Cutler, an artist who has forged his own distinctive musical milieu where techno, rave, boom-bap hip-hop, house, and ambient are drawn together by vibrant melodies and sun-washed atmospherics.

Cutler’s description of his DJ-Kicks album as “a weird midnight radio show” makes a lot of sense. This is a place where a strong authorial voice and expert programming join seemingly disparate musical strands, and each song is a second cousin to the next—familiar but distinct. As such, track selection and organization are far more important than mixing skills, which favor functional blends that neither jar nor radically reinterpret the songs in question.

Luckily, Lone’s track selection and programming are both excellent. Rather than show off the latest promos or the flashiest corners of his record collection, Cutler’s selection is primed for feel, with every track—be it old (the gorgeous proto-IDM of Balil’s “Choke and Fly”), new (Ross From Friends’ 2017 cut “The Outsiders”), obscure (Casino Versus Japan’s sprawling “Go Hawaii”), or chart-topping (Radiohead’s “Worrywort”)—employed for its particular ambience. Naturally, the two artists that have most influenced Lone, Boards of Canada and Madlib, also turn up in the shape of “Orange Romeda” and Lootpack's “Hityawitdat,” respectively.

Out of this comes a mix that stays true to its dreamy, melodic feel as it shifts genres and jumps between musical eras. Ross From Friends’ lo-fi house is followed by Drexciya’s electro classic “Bubble Metropolis,” a song that—at 24 years old—is almost prehistoric in dance music terms, while Lone’s woozy new “Brooklyn Banks” fades snugly into Camu Tao’s 2001 indie hip-hop banger “Hold the Floor.” And unlikely comparisons emerge as the mix unfurls. The twinkling deep house of Protect-U’s “Double Rainbow” shares a certain horizontal melodicism with Boards of Canada’s “Orange Romeda,” while the loose breakbeats that underpin Gnork’s housey “U” bring to mind the shuffling drums of “Hold the Floor,” some five tracks before. It’s only toward the end of the album—a slightly awkward run from Drexciya to Balil and finally Radiohead—that the mix loses its coherence, becoming more a collection of great songs than a work of artistry in itself.

Lone’s focus is generally trained on the overall flow, rather than individual songs, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t surfaced some gems. John Beltran’s “Placid Angels” is such a lovely piece of feathery Detroit techno, it beggars belief that it isn’t better known, while “Spotted,” by Heralds of Change (the duo of Mike Slott and Hudson Mohawke), sounds like a lost classic of abstract hip-hop, striding the borderline between Boards of Canada, Flying Lotus, and the imperious pomp of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir.” Among four new Lone tracks, the standout “Brooklyn Banks” marries a spring-heeled Lone Catalysts-style beat to detuned piano, and “Saturday Night” sounds like Larry Heard if he were a stoner from middle England.

Lone’s DJ-Kicks probably won’t get your party started—not in a great hurry, anyway. But it fits snugly into an illustrious line of DJ-Kicks albums that favor the mind over the feet and the bean bag over the dancefloor. In the long term, maybe that’s for the best: Depth, clever musical transitions and enveloping ambience give Lone’s DJ-Kicks an enduring appeal beyond the vagaries of electronic-music fashion and the transient demands of the club.