Lone

Matt Cutler has recorded as Lone from Nottingham since 2007, when the abstract hip-hop duo Kids in Tracksuits dissolved and he began releasing under his own name. Early records leaned on boom-bap and dusty samples; by 2010's Emerald Fantasy Tracks he had pivoted toward the early-'90s hardcore and rave he had first heard as a nine-year-old, and he has spent the decade and a half since refining a sound built on breakbeats, bright synth melodies, and a blurred nostalgia for that music. His catalogue runs through Werk Discs, R&S, his own Magicwire imprint, and most recently Greco-Roman, where 2026's Hyperphantasia pulls 2-step, hyper-pop, and rave breaks into a sixteen-track record. Azealia Banks has sampled him repeatedly and commissioned him as a producer for Broke with Expensive Taste; he mixed a DJ-Kicks in 2017; he describes his own productions in terms of colour, and says that is not metaphor but synaesthesia.