When Lane 8 sat down to write his fourth studio album, Reviver, the Denver-based producer (born Daniel Goldstein) was determined to reinvent himself as a musician. “I’ve always felt this way while working on albums—a nagging desire to break new ground and avoid repeating myself,” Goldstein told fans on Instagram, “yet the feeling was stronger than ever this time around.” Some deep reflection led him to the realisation that he’d changed profoundly as a person, too—a result of processing the shake-ups in the wide world as well as in his personal life—which naturally changed the shape of his new music. The songs on Reviver are skyscraping and hopeful, with gleaming synth stabs, gooey vocals (Channy Leaneagh, Emmit Fenn) and festival-ready drops that are moody and intense. “Illuminate”, one of the project’s standout instrumentals, was the first track Goldstein wrote after his tour shut down at the beginning of the pandemic. “I was feeling a strange mixture of nervous energy and very naive hope about the future,” he tells Apple Music. “The track’s raw energy really reflects the chaos of that moment.”