BONA2018 | Best Album: ‘Little By Little’ - Lane 8

It’s high time Lane 8 stepped out into the spotlight. After championing this musician for years, DJ Mag fans have spoken: There’s only one lane worth staying in this year. Lane 8’s ‘Little By Little’ LP will remain a constant in our headphones, well into the future.

Music fans have been tested in the age of information overload, but there is one artist who has made it his mission to break the third wall and foster true connectivity. Enter Daniel Goldstein, aka Lane 8, a progressive house artist whose beautiful melodies and fluid basslines have become synonymous with authentic memory making. His sophomore studio album ‘Little By Little’ is nostalgic by design, built to evoke emotion and transport any listener back to their most vivid of days.

The 10-track LP is a testament to everything Lane 8 does right, with expert mixing and masterful progression topping the list. The melancholy synths of ‘Daya’ provide the soft intro for this defining collection of Goldstein’s chillest, goose bump-inducing grooves and “just right” collaborations. Guest appearances from established synth-pop bands like Poliça, as well as emerging names like Fractures (the moniker of Melbourne-based artist, Mark Zito), provide rich and introspective layers to two of the album’s stand out singles, ‘No Captain’ and ‘Clarify’. Cinematic, atmospheric and orchestral at the same time, the title track displays Goldstein’s respect for pace, meanwhile the lyrics of vocal-heavy tracks like ‘Stir Me Up’ remind us of the fragility of love and the importance of now. The final surges of ‘No End In Sight’ mirror the same progressions heard up top, wrapping the 55-minute journey up in a perfectly presented package.

“For me, albums have always been the ultimate form of expression for a musician,” Goldstein tells DJ Mag. “I’ve tried to create immersive experiences for listeners on all my albums, in part because I know how important those experiences were for me as a young music fan – so it feels great to be recognized for doing the same for today’s listeners.”

Part of his success can be also be attributed to his performances. In 2018, he resurrected his wildly popular This Never Happened concept (his label shares the same name), in which he encourages guests to leave their phones at home, unplug and interact on a human level again. While you won’t find many homemade iPhone videos of Lane 8 playing ‘Little By Little’ tracks on YouTube, an ever-lengthening string of sold-out dates is enough to prove that fans are coming to engage with one another in the absence of blue light, for the first time in what seems like forever. And Daniel, that’s how you keep us ‘Coming Back To You’.

WORDS: MEGAN VENZIN