Lane 8 called it Rave and meant it

Lane 8 put out ‘Rave’ on This Never Happened on 1 June.

Then he got on a plane. The Summer Gatherings opened in New York that same weekend, so the record reached an audience that was about to hear it in a field within days of being able to stream it at home.

It’s his third single of the year, and at this point the pace is as much the story as any individual track is. He told people there’d be more music in 2023, and he’s spent the year making that a dull thing to report.

The synth leads come from somewhere older than his usual palette, retro-shaped and a little grainy, and they sit inside the melodic sound he’s been refining for years without disturbing any of it. What you get isn’t a description of standing in a large crowd. It’s the feeling of it.

Daniel runs the label as well as making the records for it, and This Never Happened has spent this whole stretch pushing hard at the question of throwaway plastics.

That’s an odd thing to find bolted to a single called ‘Rave’. It’s also the more interesting half of what the label’s been doing lately.