#kalani

Leftfield rave and contemporary club explorers Craigie Knowes rarely drop full length albums, so the advent of a new long player from the UK label is always cause for anticipation and celebration. The most recent such expansive transmission of tripped out sound comes from Kalani via his Rain Man 2xLP...an aquascaping and terraforming set of hallucinations that weaves together colorful threads of astral progressive, ambient ether trance, acid-laced and euphoria inducing breakbeat techno, and aura-cleansing new age.

Nathan Kalani Lawrence is a producer from Manchester, and over the past few years, he has been crafting his own sound within the worlds of techno, house, electro, and trance. Kalani has previously released 12”s and EPs.—and also contributed tracks to compilations—on labels such as R.A.N.D. Muzik, Alien Communications, Terrazzo, and Neptune Discs. But Rain Man is the artist’s first excursion into the extended album format, even if the project started innocently enough, and without any lofty intentions.

In a track-by-track breakdown over at Ransom Note, Kalani explains that he wrote opener “Safe Passage” after some frustrations with producing club tracks, and also with the desire to create something gentle and meditative. But beyond this, there was no real conception for an album. However, this track was the eventual genesis for several more ideas in a similar atmospheric style, and upon sending out the demos, the Craigie Knowes crew encouraged the producer to flesh out a full-length musical experience. The result is an imaginative, immersive, and glowing dreamworld of post-rave fantasy…a cosmic-aquatic cloudland of club and chillout energies primed for both psychotropic stimulation and body groove activation.

Kalani - Rain Man (Craigie Knowes, 2026) In opening track “Safe Passage,” ceremonial electronics mimic buzzing sitars while subaquatic ambient pulsations and liquiform kosmische arps interlock under soft filtering, creating a backdrop for sleepy-eyed jazz keys and drifting layers of ocean temple tonality.  “Lumin” is an album highlight, despite its somewhat laidback conception, and its simple palette of TB-808 and TR-303 emulators, breakbeat samples, and pads. Inspired by Aphex Twin, it reminds me in form and function—if not so much sound—of other bombastic, brilliant, and deceptively simplistic post-intro stunners such as LNRDCROY’s “Slam City Jam (Mix Assist Mix)“ and Linkwood’s “Off Kilter (No Midi Mix)”...its just one of those tracks that so perfectly sets the scene with immense energy and assured purpose after a brief beginning breath of subdued contemplation. Universal filter fx swell as a smashed and blasted breakbeat emerges, with euphoria cascades of midrange mirage magic breezing through the background. Pad-sourced melodies of eternal ecstasy resolve into focus, and expressive acid arpeggiations melt over the whole mix, with everything coming together to entice and entrance…as the listener falls deeper into chillout intoxication and sparking prismatic perfection. Sometimes the beats pull out, leaving the whole mix to fade into shadow, before it all resolves back into a glowing quintessence of ecstasy enhanced downbeat dreaming. The A-side then ends with “Sleep”…a track built out from a years old demo that wasn't initially intended for the album. It starts with static-shrouded flows of psychedelic synthesis and a body moving four-to-the-floor rhythm trance dancing through melting layers of siren brass serenity sourced from a trumpet under granular processing. The jazz-kissed and house infused club beats are slightly shuffling and skipping as they occasionally drop into broken beat blissouts, and the bass grooves anchoring it all are sumptuous, smooth, and so ultra-deep.

“What Do You Mean?” features inventive and almost labyrinthine breakbeat patterns cutting up the air, with influences ranging from jungle to garage filtering wildly, and taking my mind to some of the more rhythmically complex tracks from Lone. Evocative and out-there pluck tones modulate and morph as they create a maddeningly psychactive effect, and layered panoramas of cosmic rave chords cascade over one another as the rhythms refuse to settle…the whole thing alive with colorful displays of texture and tone…some exuding hues of plasticine neon, others projecting blinding shades of laser light. Calming breaths of feminine angel magic disperse through tape delay manipulations, and towards the end, the rhythms disappear, leaving behind an echo-shrouded panorama of glowstick tracing and rave racing arp chord delirium. “Solar Swimming" hits like smooth and silky progressive trance, which shimmers and sparkles through lush landscapes of futuristic fantasy. Bulbous dub-infused basslines pump and pulse with an irresistible optimism, and startrails of dayglo delirium sequence through the mix, radiating rainbow colorations along the way. The coos and cries of cuddly alien creates surf through the background ether, and the textural and slightly driven drums occasionally back off into dreamtime breaks, before flashing again into a trancetime flow, wherein soft accents of glory and triumph are evoked via barely there poly-pads playing melodic paeans to the grandeur of sun and sky.

The title track begins side C, and is rough and rolling as it comes to life on towering constructions of broken beat mayhem…like a bass heavy and busted shadowstorm that is eventually overlaid by a mindmelting miasma of hyperactive dubchords. The background continues storming in a tribalistic blast of bass heavy technoid madness, and at some point, it all breaks down into near silence, with alien frogs croaking into the void. But eventually, the manic chord currents resume their crazed cascade, and the cymbals flow back in along with the vaporous and vacuous storms of mid-bass madness, resulting in a passage of more considered and controlled rhythmic science, wherein sparse kick drums land only ever so often, creating a heady and hypnotic energy flow that sets up the eventual return of the peaktime maelstrom. And as the track develops, the background is increasingly suffused by Chain Reaction-esque whispers…these textural ghost liquids and sentient structures of static. “Moon Dance,” as explained in the Ransome Note track breakdown, references and re-hashes elements from the second to last track “Holographs,” and is also intended to function as an atmospheric breather. Hallucinogenic chillout breaks flow at a slightly amped up tempo…the vibe super loved up and stoned out…with hyperspeed arps circulating through fantastical patterns. Outerzone organ chords add a layer of anthemic balearic fantasy, and everything occasionally filters, morphs, and automates through enigmatic and near extra-terrestrial fx layers, coming out like some otherworldly DMT trip before it all snaps back into focus. I sense a kinship with the revved up raved out breakbeat chiller jams of Phyzikal Flex, though it’s perhaps a bit more spacious and spiritual, with anticipatory pauses, exo-planetary birdsong and forest sounds beaming in from some other star system.

“Selectors” is another intricate and complex composition primed for danceflor detonation, and it begins the D side with ultra down-low breaks cutting through a world of shadow, with programming that is extremely dynamic and compelling. Acid lines fly out like some turbulent storm of techno fire and drug club fury, and an aura of menace seems to surrounding the dark and evolving incantation of breakdance sorcery. Snare patterns smash and slice through the air, galactic pads rain down with an air of almost satanic majesty, and telephonic tracer leads flow in from an unknowable source…all as the bass lands like pillowy puffs of humid tropical air. Somehow my mind goes to the darker productions of D. Tiffany, and also those of Fantastic Man. “Holographs” was written and engineered while Kalani was taking restive walks up and down Manchester’s canals, with the interplay of darkness, light, and water all forming a source of inspiration. The resulting track is a fourth world futurescape of alien flora and fauna, one that features ambient pads surrounding the stereo field as broken snare patterns further guide the drift. Balmy bass introduces rhythms of ambient trance mesmerism, which skip, glide, and dream their way through a forest of astral magic. The intensity picks up slightly as sequential chord structures add a deeper sense of propulsion, with the bass growing ever more bulbous and bottom heavy as it seemingly billows outward with a 3D effect. The kick drops out for a stretch, which furthers the feel of horizontal dream dance immersion, before flowing gently back in, as if to carry the mind, body, and spirit away on an eternal drift of percolating and pulsating progressive dance and world space psychedelia, where airy and evaporative rhythms move through a new age soundscape of myriad intoxicating colors. The final track “Rose Petals” heads even deeper into new age narcosis, with its lullaby landscapes of angelic arpeggiation and dream-inducing revolutions of choral euphoria...these youthful voices blearing and blurring into a rainbow haze, which merges with hovering and healing clouds of pearlescent light.