Last week, Lane 8 released a 7-track mini-album titled “Cross Pollination”, featuring collaborative mixes with his friends. Lane 8 is an American producer and DJ who creates all sorts of soothingly beautiful house music. Earlier this year, he released a full album, “Brightest Lights”, which he had intended to bring on tour. Of course, with the pandemic, the tour dreams were stopped but that hasn’t stopped him from working on new music, as evidenced by this mini-album.
The album is a blissful adventure through fun and explorative house melodies, occasionally punctured by sweet, airy vocals. The opening track is “And We Knew It Was Our Time”, a collaboration with Massane, which has a run time of 9 minutes and 23 seconds. Between the minimalistic sound design and pulsating crescendos, it really is the perfect starter song to get you excited for the remainder of the album.
With the second song, “Shatter”, with OTR, the tracks begin to shift to a more fast-paced tempo with more percussive elements sprinkled in. The tempo picks up even more through “Buggy”, with Yotto, and “Run”, with Kasablanca. The latter introduces an even deeper house element and includes more full vocals than we’ve heard so far.
“Matcha Mistake”, with Kidnap, starts out slower and varies in tempo, with much more synth dropped throughout. “Roll Call”, with Anderholm, carries on the percussive and synth themes established in the previous songs but returns to a more minimalistic use of vocals. “Out of Sight”, with Hexlogic, rounds out this tracklist. We almost complete full-circle to a more stripped-down production, but one that feels darker at times.
This album is a must-listen for any house lover. Every song has been so meticulously crafted to fit perfectly within this journey of synths, vocals, and house melodies. It’s an album that is guaranteed to get you up and grooving.
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