After its initial spray of overheated trance synths, ecstatic pianos, and feverish vocal samples, Matt Cutler’s latest album as Lone—the electronic project he’s maintained since 2008, casting hip-hop, house, and retro rave in streaks of neon and day-glo—pools into a two-minute inkblot of an interlude. A calm voice says, “Imagine a song, one with vocals and instruments,” and then continues: “Does it have all the instruments? Can you swap out instruments? Swap out lyrics wholesale?” It begins to feel a bit like a psych exam, which it is. These questions are part of a test for hyperphantasia, a mysterious condition in which the patient has extremely vivid mental imagery across all senses, sometimes uncontrollably. It sounds kind of fun, but there’s a catch: It can also cause suffering, particularly if the person is prone to anxiety or obsessive thoughts.
Cutler, though, doesn’t seem to be that way. His music is all waterfalls, gleaming chrome textures, and dolphins jumping through kaleidoscopes. He seems like a positive thinker, and Hyperphantasia is an apt metaphor for his style. Cutler describes the LP as “unhinged, unrestrained, self-indulgent bat-shit pop music from an alternate dimension.” That might be another way of saying that he’s just getting back to his dance-music roots after 2021’s calmer Always Inside Your Head, with a few vocalists along for the ride this time. The album plays to Cutler’s strengths—high-octane, molly-fueled dance music—so it’s a boon for longtime Lone heads, but not all of that batshit pop music actually hits.
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With a handful of verse-chorus-verse pop songs, and dancier tracks broken up by the kind of gorgeous, new-agey interludes that Cutler can probably write in his sleep, Hyperphantasia is actually a pretty conventional album. The music is jumpy and excitable, but not without precedent. We’ve heard these piano runs and zig-zagging song structures before; “Affinity (Cloud Four Four Mix)” and “Triton” hinge on old-school speed garage with muscular drums and vocal samples that work themselves into a tizzy, treading similarly familiar ground. There’s some classic Lone magic, like when “Affinity” melts into a gorgeous, gospelly breakdown. But “Triton”’s powerful thrust is a little dampened by the grating vocal sample, like a particularly well-produced track you’d hear on the fictional pirate-radio station in the British mockumentary People Just Do Nothing.
The instrumental tracks are some of the most exciting Lone tunes in years. “Scattergun” revs up bouncy 2-step before shooting off into breakbeat hardcore, the embodiment of chaotic good. The seven-minute “Waterfall Reverse” is a thrill ride, careening from breakbeat hardcore to ’90s big beat before unfurling into dreamy Boards of Canada drift, with pianos that glint in the artificial sunshine. But “Waterfall Reverse” was first released more than two years ago (as the B-side to “Triton”), and it’s hidden away at the back of the album alongside “Scattergun,” so you have to work to get there.
If you only listened to the first half of Hyperphantasia, you might wonder when the batshit comes in, because Cutler mostly errs on the side of midtempo pop. “Big World,” with Lou Hayter, slows the momentum down with a boom-bap swagger that never quite lands, while the ultra-catchy bassline of “Miracle Mile” would work better with more room to breathe. The only real stinker is “Throw the Ember,” which addles a vintage Lemurian-style hip-hop beat with a boring rap verse that namechecks Deedee Megadoodoo. “Wemove,” like Disneyfied 4Hero with its hoover stabs and freewheeling drums, stands up to the test, but it doesn’t need the superfluous squeaky vocal from Ell Murphy. Without these detours, Hyperphantasia might have been a lean, face-melting machine as devastating as Cutler imagined.
