Review | Lone, “Temples” [R&S Records]

Nottingham producer Lone has carved a rich niche for himself in terms of making interesting and danceable house music. His Ambivert Tools, Volume Two dropped last year and made use of the whole spectrum of synth lead and drumwork to create a record full of vibrant and arresting dance micro-journeys.

Amidst the simple enough bars of bass and conventional stomp of the beats, he manages to add enough local colour to constellate what can best be described as ‘moments’ of pure colour and melody. His latest track with R&S Records, “Temples” takes a pretty simple break and points up the snares which form a solid undercurrent that sustains the tune with a really biting rhythm. Things progress into an intense flurry of instrumentation as the track goes on but it’s punctuated throughout by pockets of deep melody that add relief to the whole piece.

Alongside the really ethereal and transcendent padwork, there’s a perfectly balanced mix of choicely selected flourishes of Japanese flute. All this diverse instrumentation adds extra timbre to the texture of what is essentially an intensely melodic banger—a truly pulsating and serpentine beast of a tune that drops lots of moments of colour and space along the way before the arpeggiated synth line takes over completely and blasts you with a super-satisfying, rhythmical surge of melody.

Definitely a promising new direction for Lone, and a great addition to R&S’s roster.

(You can find our curated playlist of top tunes from R&S Records here on our website.)