Lone interview: “The idea of having a ‘soul’ appeals to me I guess”

We tune into the world of Lone and his Natural Aerials EP

Lone releases his ‘Natural Aerials EP‘ at the end of this week, a neat four track collection of the Nottingham musician’s core sounds, namely crunchy breakbeats and beguiling, swirling melodicism, all reworkings from his recent LP.

Following hot on the heels of his recent LP Always Inside your Head, the EP even features a speedy remix from long term fan Sherelle (pictured below) who said: “it’s a pleasure and honour to remix for Lone, as being a long-time fan, it’s beautiful to be able to collaborate. I really wanted my first remix to be special and also for someone who I hugely admire, so Matt asking me to be involved in this process was truly magical!”

We caught up with Lone aka Matt Cutler, to get the full story on the EP and his general state of mind in 2022. This is what we discovered….

It’s been a good five years since ‘Levitate’, your last album. What’s happened in your life since, and how did it inform on the inspirations behind AIYH 

I stayed totally busy with music. I’d just finished a run of three albums for R&S and wanted to try something different. Levitate wasn’t aimed at the club at all – It was more a love letter to a lot of the ‘Drill and bass’ albums I was obsessed with in the 90’s. So,  the next step after finishing that album, it felt right to focus on DJing and make music desinged for my DJ sets, and rather than release an album of dance floor material – which to be honest doesn’t work 95% of the time – I set out to release a bunch of dancefloor EP’s which ended up being the Ambivert Tools series. That took me up to 2018. I put out a DJ Kicks album in that time as well. Non of these things informed the album though. The album was totally inspired by thoughts and feelings I’ve had throughout my life about existence – birth to death and kinda fixated on death a bit too much actually. Totally internal. 

Two key influences for this record were the Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine. There’s a lot of crossover music being made between electronic and shoegaze / dream pop at the moment, and at the same time, there’s a rather obvious shoegaze revival going on at the moment. Why do you think that crossover has become more popular nowadays?

I have no idea about an obvious shoegaze revival – that’s not on my radar at all to be honest with you.  The shoegaze thing is only one aspect really.. My album is as much about ambient music, UK street soul, trip hop, 90s drum & bass…  

AIYH seems to tug at two disparate emotions: one being the raw excitement of tearout breakbeat and hip hop, and the other being shoegazing bliss. Is this something you’ve always wanted to do – reconcile different moods?

Breakbeats are in my blood, I reckon. First music I ever got in to was Breakbeat / Hardcore. It’s imprinted on my heart so it’ll always be a part of what I do – not even intentionally a lot of the time though – Just instinctively, it’s part of me. I definitely get a buzz out of contrasting moods though, totally – that is something I definitely wanted to play with on this album. 

You’ve said AIYH essentially imagines what Kevin Shields might do to a breakbeat or Balearic album. Could you explain a little more about the importance of Shields’ productions to you?

Yeah that was how I imagined one of the tracks specifically – Inlove2. I wanted a kind of early Ibiza, holding hands with your best mate on the beach at 6am loved up 1989 kinda vibe… Kind of likeThe Beloved, early Orb and old Weatherall mixes I was listening to – all coated in that Kevin Shield lush wall of noise.  To explain the importance of Shields production…. It’s kind of impossible to put in to words, how much MBV music means to me – Just the warmest, most psychedelic music in the world… I first got in to them in Summer 2005. Their music blew me away so much I made an album that summer that was basically a bunch of weird covers of ‘Loveless’ – I’d try and do a straight cover and it’d quickly spiral out into something totally different, but I did it track for track until I had a whole album that was totally modelled on Loveless. In fact – the outro vignette at the end of ‘Inlove2’ is something from that album I made in 2005 – That crude little warped / reversed guitar loop. All that old, unreleased music still means so much to me so it was nice to include a bit of it on this album.

Like much of your previous releases, there’s a lot of watery ‘rave euphoria’ in AIYH. It all kind of sounds magically underwater. We’re wondering if you took influence from John Beltran, whose music sounds somewhat similar, and also has watery themes. In terms of imagery, what scenes and environments were you imagining when creating the album, and did they perchance involve water?

That’s interesting you mention John. Yeah he’s defintiely someone I think sees / hears music like me. Or me him, however you want to look at it. Same appreciation for harmony / chords and melodies… He’s one of only a few artists I feel that specific connection with – where it feels like it’s coming from SUCH a similar place… I love John – he’s made so much amazing music. He wasn’t really an influence on this album directly but I’m sure there’s moments on it where it’d be easy to make that connection ’cause I think we have such a similar ear. The water thing – The only moment I can recall where that was the exact texture I was trying to create would be on ‘Coming Into Being…’ the last track. There’s a bit where everything gets submerged – It happens a couple of times and then never again. In my head it’s like being in a cave, totally flooded and pitch black with beams of blue light flashing suddenly… That’s about as simply as i can explain it to be honest… and that does it no justice at all really. The imagery is so abstract to me… sounds are represented in my mind visaully by colours and shapes, weird textures based on the length or ‘size’ of a sound… but yeah – dark, glowing watery caves was the vibe quite a bit this time around.

Could you tell us more about the album’s production – how did you achieve those overwhelming, irradiant chords and vocals, like in ‘Undaunted’?

Undaunted was a funny one – In it’s original form it was one of the very first things completed for the album and the very first vocal from Morgane. In fact the original instrumental was something I had kicking around since 2012. It was basically done – the vocals were amazing but I just didn’t feel quite right about my bits… Just before I finished the record I went back to it and scrapped the music completley and started again – building a song around these vocals, as opposed to vocals being build around music… it was a cool way of working for me, a bit like remixing something with vocals where I get rid of the music and make something new around the vocal. 

The album is a life-cycle, with one of its ponderances being what happens after death. What got you thinking about this? 

Being alive! Being awake. I’ve thought about it all way too much since I was a kid, basically. Like, I just cannot fucking believe that one day I’m going to die. It’s so mental.  As much as I try to block this stuff out, It’s kind of always there. Especially during the making of this album, during lockdown – it all got pretty dark, mental health wise. Music has been a good way of channeling some of this stuff over the years for me though and I guess with all the dark shit going on in the world over the last few years – whilst I was making this music – I really used it as a tool to process it all. More so this time than on any other project I’ve done before. Definitely the ‘darkest’ thing I’ve done. Looking forward to making some proper straight up euphoric shit, next.

Could you name any specific pieces of music you were listening to at the time of this album’s inspiration / making?

            Orbital – Times Fly EP (1995)

            UNKLE – The Time Has Come EP (1994)

            Cocteau Twins – Bluebeard (1994)

            Goldie – Timeless (1995)

            V/A – Northern Exposure (mixed by Sasha and Digweed) (1996)

            Sneaker Pimps – Becoming X (1996)

            Dave Angel – Tales Of The Unexpected (1995)

            Bjork – Post (1995)

            My Bloody Valentine – Tremelo EP (1991)

            Massive Attack – Mezzanine (1998)

            Neneh Cherry – Raw Like Sushi (1988)

You worked with Brighton singer and songwriter Morgane Diet for the vocals on this project. How did you link up with her, and will we hear more from the two of you? 

Yeah! she is amazing. And what she does couldn’t be more perfect for what I had in mind for this album. It’s all down to my mate Chris – he plays drums with me when we play live. Him and Morgane were mates and had actually worked on some tunes of their own. I can remember trying to explain what it was I wanted to do on this album years ago to Chris and he mentioned Morgane. We still haven’t met though believe it or not – due to the pandemic everything was done back and forth over email. I’m hoping we meet sometime soon though. Hopefully if the timing is right and the right gig opportunity comes along she can join us on stage, that’d be amazing. Would definitely want to work with her on some more stuff for the next project.

What do you think happens after death?

The idea of having a ‘soul’ appeals to me I guess.  And by ‘Soul’ I mean, whatever the fuck it is that consciousness actually IS.   I’m not spiritual at all in the traditional sense though I am and have pretty much always been obsesseed with this stuff for as far back as I can remember. I basically think none of us know.

Whatever the amazing unknowable mysterious things are that we haven’t figured out yet will all one day just be facts like all the other shit was before – I’m sure of that. I do like to think that this side of us that is deep and that is cognitive and has feelings and can feel spirituality – I like to think that whatever that energy is – It doesn’t seem enough that it only exists in a body for 80 years or whatever. So I quite like the idea of some sort of ‘Soul’ that goes on to a next phase but, who knows.