Matt "Lone" Cutler is the best neo-rave producer out there. Give or take Rustie, he may be the best dance producer to make a name in the last five years, period. And Galaxy Garden, the fifth Lone album since 2007, is a wonder, his most complete statement yet, both a refinement and an expansion of the genre-of-one he's been perfecting over the last few years.
Each track on Galaxy Garden is a four- or five-minute maximalist marvel in minimalist disguise. Always direct and propulsive, as if racing forward without the time to stop and admire their own brilliant detail work, Lone tracks still manage to juggle three or six or 10 layers of rhythm with disarming skill. One beat alone may be constructed from footwork-like kick barrages, clattering retro drum machines, wild hand percussion loops, and chimes and bells that accent the already intricate groove science.
Even at his "simplest," like the clank-clonk of "Cthulhu", which echoes the spare programming of late drum and bass, Cutler swirls all sorts of glittering rhythm baubles around the main beat. Because why risk boredom when you can go all-out? Like the best young dance producers of the moment, happily embracing abundance after years of miserly dance minimalism, Cutler's attitude seems to be that more is always better, provided it doesn't fuck up the groove.
And then there's the magic Cutler works on top of those grooves, a spell of simple heart-tugging melodies, show-off instrumental virtuosity, and pure sound effect pyrotechnics. As if constructing such head-wrecking beats was no big deal, he then attempts to throw in everything else he can, whether it's warm Detroit synth washes, plangent guitar licks, prog-like keyboard runs, hardcore synth stabs that trigger both nostalgia and an adrenalin rush, or all of them at once. "The Animal Pattern" is anchored by a silly bouncing ball of a keyboard pattern, guaranteed to produce grins. It's a good enough hook to carry someone else's whole track, but that doesn't stop Cutler from including spasms of acid house, delicate Kraftwerk-like runs, and whooshes like cartoon spacecraft taking off.
What's amazing is that, despite their density, Lone tracks never splutter out into headache-inducing clutter. I'm guessing that's because Cutler has fixed on certain operating principles of old-school rave as much as the sound itself. He understands the way the best rave producers managed to combine so many paradoxical ideas about form and intent into single tracks.
So, sure, Cutler can expertly echo certain precise moments from rave's past, intentionally or not, like the way "As a Child" recalls both the tape-warp wooziness of Bodysnatch's "Secret Summer Fantasy" and the idyllic guitar loop of DJ Die's "Autumn". But those are two reference points you're hardly required to know in order to enjoy the track, maybe two reference points Cutler didn't even have in mind. Because forget historical fidelity for a minute: What really links Galaxy Garden to that early-1990s golden age is the way it manages to be both manic and chill, overstuffed with ideas and viscerally direct, relentlessly uplifting and never drippy about it.
Most millennial neo-ravers were barely eating solid food when acts like Orbital were cutting their first ecstatic singles. As Simon Reynolds noted in his "Maximal Nation" essay, they'd come of age with the starkness of dance-punk, the gloom of early dubstep, the grimness of "serious" European techno. So maybe this youthful revolt-- rediscovering the neon surfaces, speedy beats, and throw-in-as-many-hooks-as-you-can pop thrills of late-1980s and early-90s dance music-- wasn't so surprising. Kids gotta go against the dominant culture, after all. And after a decade spent exploring thousand shades of darkness, this overturning of values was wonderful, like waking up one day to sunshine after a week of shitty weather.
But once you got over the surprise, that this music had not been stricken from dance history after all, it was hard not to hear something dry and academic and forced in a lot of the new stuff. There was a certain irony there, given that early rave was all about vitality and immediacy, as if this wave of rave reverence had drained the sound of some essence. There was also the nagging question of whether these neo-rave records offered anything new, any 21st-century twists to make them stand out from the records they paid tribute to.
Cutler is in his late 20s, not really a kid anymore, and so he probably has vague memories of this music playing itself out in real time. But anyone can easily download the whole of rave history now, become a scholar without having been there at all. Part of what makes Galaxy Garden unique, in a scene that's quickly become glutted, is its simultaneous sensitivity to particular old-school sonics and an interest in everything that's come after.
Mostly this now-ness surfaces in the rhythms. There are groove ideas here that never would have occurred to a producer in 1991, either because the technology wasn't quite there yet or beats had yet to be twisted in those particular ways. Which is a little funny, because for his first few doggedly downtempo albums, melody was Lone's strong suit, not rhythm. And yet, after a few years making excellent if not particularly noteworthy homages to Boards of Canada, something in Cutler's music opened up once he rediscovered that early rave and techno really moved him. This is not the way things usually go with retro-minded artists, who are often so obsessed with mimicking each period detail of their heroes' work that the results wind up sounding pinched and inhibited. By focusing on the music he loved, however old it was, and keeping tabs on the present, Cutler could become more himself.
I'm usually wary of making the kind sweeping pronouncements about an artist's value found in that first paragraph, but in Lone's case, uncomplicated enthusiasm seems like the appropriate response. Lone's music is obviously complex, especially once you get past the overwhelming brightness of its outer layers and the rush of the tempo. But like the music made by his rave and techno heroes, Galaxy Garden is celebratory stuff. Mostly it seems to be celebrating the simple luck of being alive, of getting to make music designed to bring people together rather than bum them out.
