The hyper-chromatic music of Matt Cutler marks him out as a true impressionist. On Cutler’s fifth Lone album, Reality Testing, released on R&S, he sends notes and chords rippling delicately into space before allowing them to disperse, each oozing away into the background fabric of the music. Combined with rhythms that ebb and flow, shifting from propulsive club constructions to beatific coastal hip-hop, it’s a sensuous, immersive experience.

“I was listening to a lot of Detroit techno and old Chicago house that had the same grain and dirtiness to it as a lot of the hip-hop I was listening to,” says Cutler of the genesis for Reality Testing. “That was the real spark – I wanted to make an album that had both hip-hop and house beats, but that weren’t completely different from each other, that shared the same sort of vibe.I love the idea of two things sat side by side, but instead of it seeming like they’re complete opposites, [it’s more that] those two things could almost be the same thing.”

Cutler’s  output as Lone to date has portrayed a creative mind, always searching for new pathways along which to take his sound. In his early years, he remembers, his work rate was relentless: “literally every day [I’d be] working on music, doing tracks really quickly, just trying to capture a mood and a vibe.” Indeed, Lone’s music, with its melodic warmth and emotional expressiveness, has long felt like a portal into Cutler’s subconscious – each individual track, like a sketchbook, seems to enshrine a particular mood at the moment it’s written. As time has gone on, Cutler has, “become better at capturing that,” he says, “and then leaving it for awhile, really taking the time to explore it and make the most of it, make [the track] a clearer picture.”