There Is Love In You - Four Tet

There Is Love In You

Four Tet
Domino Records.

SCQ Rating: 82%

If direction hasn’t been at the heart of every thesis revolving Four Tet’s discography all these years, it has certainly been a noteworthy concentration. From the declarations, both with Pause and Rounds, that he’s a genre-pioneer to assertions from improv-fanatics that Tongues and NYC break ground for an electro-jazz revolution, Kieran Hebden has earned heavy cred for supplementing his successful Four Tet brand with a workingman’s verve for side-projects and remixes. Nonetheless, Hebden’s multiple Steve Reid-affiliated jams, a Fridge album and (let’s not forget) Ringer EP, Four Tet’s lackluster 2008 effort, have stunted a vertical arrow, once ascending to dizzying heights, into a myriad of small arrows plateauing outward. These flow-chart inspired questions of direction have only increased in anticipation of There Is Love In You, the first Four Tet full-length in five years, as Hebden dives wholeheartedly into modern dance music.

Purportedly fleshed out and refined over his lengthy DJ residency at Plastic People, There Is Love In You finds Four Tet fully committed to the glassy-eyed minimal techno suggested on Ringer EP. It could’ve been a disaster. The very notion of Kieran Hebden, one of electronic music’s best beat-programmers, turning to uber-popular 4/4 beats just gave me chills. Yet what failed on Ringer EP – two-dimensional melodies, flat drones - is revisited and scrapped in favour of a streamlined Everything Ecstatic sequel; woven with a thousand familiar, winking harmonies but blitzed out on the autobahn with far more BPM. Opening with a reminder of last year’s memorable split with Burial, ‘Angel Echoes’ finds Hebden still swimming in vocal samples, spliced into new patterns like bottle shards softened by club-induced beats. Despite its healthy four-minute length, this addictive track feels like little more than an intro; possibly because it’s as stationary and well-fed as ‘Smile Around the Face’, or maybe because it’s followed by the nine-minute rave-up ‘Love Cry’. Indeed, the minimal techno influence is inescapable, gripping the staccato punctuations of ‘Sing’ and utilizing predictable, three-note progressions on the aptly-named ‘Plastic People’.

Where, on one hand, his beats threaten to cast Four Tet into the Kompakt crowd with Gui Boratto and The Field, There Is Love In You acts as a blueprint for Hebden’s melodic instincts, allowing him to layer curious found-sounds and organic instruments over measured time-signatures. In this vein, ‘Sing’ features some trance vocals stretched into childish-meets-exorcist strands while the seemingly infinite arpeggios of ‘Circling’ end up meshing for a surprisingly structured finale. These careful inclusions muddle what could’ve been Four Tet’s most transparent album, offering complexity from slight turns, grit from sleek frames.

Still, there’s something to be said for ‘Reversing’, a dance track rewound which gracefully speaks volumes about Four Tet’s career-path indecision. Winding backward so quickly, the sounds of bass and crashing cymbals can barely be deciphered from the percolating melodies still resonating in real time. Where next? In terms of the Four Tet saga, There Is Love In You may be remembered most as the album Hebden hung up his innovator’s cap to bask in the pale light of modern trends. Or perhaps this will be considered the first Four Tet release that manages to be more beautiful than provocative. With ‘This Unfurls’, which takes a refreshing backpeddle to the days of live drums and BoC psychedelia, and ‘She Just Likes to Fight’, a polished revisiting of ‘Slow Jam’, There Is Love In You often feels like a smoke-and-mirrors standstill, or a slight regression. No matter how you spin it, the debate of Four Tet’s direction doesn’t weigh so much when he sounds so on top of his game.

Moth/Wolf Cub 12" - Burial + Four Tet

Moth/Wolf Cub

Four Tet & Burial
Text Records.

SCQ Rating: 86%

Like many electronica fans, I digested the curious news two weeks ago of a super-limited twelve-inch release that sported rare collaborations between Four Tet and Burial. No details, no confirmation from either camp responsible, and above all else, copies of this release had sold out before most major online-publications caught word of its existence! So I ravenously searched for proof of life, finding the same scraps as everyone else, before accidentally discovering it (and by “it”, yes, I mean the actual vinyl) several days ago. Forgive any bragging that ensues…

There’s a mystic rustling at the commencement of ‘Moth’; a masala of test-tones and dull taps that provide one’s first audio accompaniment to the many questions of this mystery release. The most common and probably necessary query to coattail this release boils down to who is responsible for what, given there are no liner notes amid the black-clad cover-art. Did each artist produce a side to this twelve-inch or were both tracks written and recorded together? Both bloggers and professional critics have embraced this lack of information with a zest best remembered from the days of print magazines and anticipated release dates, but it’s a question easily answered if, of course, you actually own the record. Each side of this limited vinyl is inscribed with the song and artist responsible, and on both sides, it reads: “Burial + Four Tet”. Case closed. If that doesn’t satiate your doubt, however, you can always just listen and discover the obvious collison of these two artists yourself.

Anyway, enough mystic rustling: we’ve traded enough mysteries when, really, the music proves to be the real story. As soon as ‘Moth’ flickers into its divine techno-trance of deep bass stabs and dancefloor stutter, you’ll think you’ve found the best club track of the year. Then it’ll wiggle out of its strict bassline and bounce from a softer lens, maintaining its momentum but increasingly dewier, out of focus, and upon Burial’s inclusion of perfectly-pitched vocal samples, you might just realize it’s the best electronic track of 2009. Moving from direct, spontaneous and white-knuckled to a nearly muted, nostalgic reflection of its first half, ‘Moth’ is artful in a way few dance tracks of recent years have been capable of. It’s a result could only arrive from not one, but two of our finest electronic producers, as both sets of fingerprints are all over these tracks. Imagine the frenetic melodies of Four Tet’s Ringer EP that endlessly cycled its own footsteps, yet instead of being stabilized by that EP’s dependence on 4/4 techno beats, now imagine Hebden’s loops hitched to Burial’s ever-accomplished percussive clatter - those wood-block thuds and concrete-wet smacks – which, combined, gives spirited new direction for both artists in the heart-pounding ‘Wolf Cub’. If ‘Moth’ is poised to steal the best dancefloors in Britain this summer, than ‘Wolf Cub’ might soundtrack the footrace that ensues out the back of the club and into the jungle night. Although Four Tet’s cut-up codas lay the track’s foundation, this is inevitably Burial’s high-point; each subtle tap or pounding grime-step beat deviating between sympathetic rain-on-window or irresistible, elastic, hammerhead euphoria. As these two compositions shift between speeds and emotions, Moth/Wolf Cub warrants the tease/argument of being both Four Tet and Burial’s finest work to date.

Artistic collaborations between solo artists are commonly akin to B-movies, not because the musicians involved are subpar but because with collaboration comes varied ideas, with varied ideas comes ego or disagreement, and with ego or disagreement comes polarity or - the evil enemy of art itself - consensus. It’s an extremely unpolished thesis but the proof is everywhere; it’s the reason Lindstrom albums are infinitely more anticipated than Lindstrom & Prins Thomas albums and, dare I say, Four Tet albums take precedence over Fridge albums. It’s also why remix albums are virtual footnotes to an artist’s body of work. How Burial and Four Tet sidestepped the usual homogenization inherent to collaboration is unbeknownst to me, but it’s a strategy as coveted and important as the resulting document itself. Now I’m no fool; the hype surrounding this release can only bolster the blogosphere’s blind delight. Yet if either of these tracks showed trace of a recycled or substandard idea, this underhanded press-approach would come off as little more than a hollow gimmick. Truth is, the whole package is so damned fresh, you’ll forget the piece of vinyl was hyped in the first place. Sure, these two producers may’ve first crossed paths on The Eraser RMXS but after Moth/Wolf Cub, their future collaborations (rumoured to be in the process) look to be deservedly higher in profile.

Ringer EP - Four Tet

Ringer EP
Four Tet
Domino Records.


SCQ Rating: 83%

Kieran Hebden should be commended for the way he manages his output as often as for the work itself. For an artist as prolific and versatile as Hebden, creating distance between his freestyle jazz project with Steve Reid (where Hebden goes by his own name) and his Four Tet moniker is an ingenious feat. Under one name, Hebden is free to explore and galvanize various experiments without injuring the name of Four Tet, his super-successful guise and its immaculate discography. All the same, for every project Hebden has undertaken since 2005 (several Steve Reid collaborations, a Fridge record and a billion remixes), the long wait on Four Tet’s imminent return only raised expectations.

And if history teaches us anything, expectations are just what Hebden needs to fuel his contrary creativity as ‘Ringer’ is perhaps the most glaring example of an inaccessible Four Tet song. On Rounds he crafted the perfect comfort music for melody-loving electronica fans. With Everything Ecstatic, Hebden turned on hip-hop and dancehall fanatics. Here - although you could argue that this is catered toward the underground trance enthusiasts - we find Four Tet exploring his own artistic boundaries, and these four lengthy tracks are all proof that his careful compositions won’t succumb to the area of dance music most often ridiculed: its repetitiveness.

Starting its near-ten minute running time with an airtight techno coda, ‘Ringer’ breaks into a half dozen directions at once; two fluttering melodies, a thumping 4/4 beat and digital noise crawling the song’s corners while its trance stitches hold strong. What keeps the whole song sane is that these aspects never clutter, and through the album’s entirety, each song is made of several mini-suites held together by its pulse-steady rhythm. By the time ‘Ringer’s live drums come trampling in, one can’t help but feel like they’ve discovered something important.

Despite this rare explosion of percussion, Hebden seems to be making it clear that no one in the music press will typecast him as DJ juggernaut in dance circles the way Everything Ecstatic did, the same way he ensured that nobody would pigeon-hole him into “folktronica” after Rounds. With beat-making, his almighty muse in 2005, retreating from the foreground of his songwriting, Four Tet seems intent on undergoing his latest transformation into electronica’s more delicately detailed playground. ‘Ribbons’ would be a bubbling ballad if its beat’s RPM weren’t as complex as they are. It’s a calming breather spatially, although its bass-heavy beat is as persistent as the rest of Ringer EP’s material. On the issue of space, ‘Swimmer’ is lost in it for the first few minutes of tepid drones and steady thumps before some keyboard chords introduce us to the song’s backbone. These slow builds, which characterize the EP to a fault, are ever-present on final track ‘Wing Body Wing’ which builds toward its digital, percussive thud after two minutes of seemingly aimless rock-clapping and wood-tapping. That clever, winking side to Hebden’s recordings is what separates Ringer EP from falling into trance’s predictability pit, and if you have to set aside some extra time for the payoffs, that anticipation is infinitely better than most Ibiza soundtracks, where you get the payoff before it has significance and then endure it burrowing into your skull for twelve minutes.

Everything Ecstatic - Four Tet

Everything Ecstatic

Four Tet
Domino Records.

SCQ Rating: 71%

Don’t mention the term 'folktronica' around Kieran Hebden; it’s perhaps the one word that could make the polite Brit turn his back on you. It’s bad enough to have a made-up, ridiculous genre like folktronica following your career but in Hebden’s case, where he’s been credited with creating it, there’s an imminent breaking point. Luckily for us Four Tet fans, that breaking point is an album called Everything Ecstatic – a shape-shifting dance record that channels warped Boards of Canada tones as often as chaotic, afro-beat rhythms. So if you’re among those fans that think Four Tet’s previous work resembled folk, this might as well resemble drum n bass.

If the raw vibrating bass line that assumes all melodic duties of ‘A Joy’ isn’t jarring enough for fans of the elegant Rounds, check out ‘Smile Around the Face’ – a pop song, Four Tet-style, featuring simple digital percussion and chipmunk-pitched vocals. Truthfully, the song starts out on generic ground but by the three minute mark, Hebden has brought all the whirs, clicks and keyboards together to transform a predictable hip-hop dynamic into a lush dreamscape. The most emblematic track on Everything Ecstatic has to be ‘Sleep, Eat Food, Have Visions’, a painstaking effort that proves how capable of a producer Four Tet has become. Layers upon layers of scratches, whistles, field recordings and beats sum up its seven and a half minutes of bedlam, like a distillation of the record at large. No doubt, the drum patterns on display are among the most sophisticated and flashy I’ve ever heard, but bombast aside, it’s difficult to ignore that Four Tet, a man of countless talents, is playing the same hand over and over.

Everything Ecstatic is a welcome excursion, mostly because Hebden has too much creativity to simply roll out Rounds 2.0. Even when he lowers his drum-programming guard, there are elements of his earlier pastoral side; the melodic circles of ‘High Fives’ or ‘You Were There With Me’s tender close. These whispers of his ‘folktronic’ past might sound buried in other influences, but they’ve really transformed into something far more primeval, unpredictable, and occasionally, tedious.

Tongues - Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid

Tongues

Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid
Domino Records.

SCQ Rating: 51%

When Kieran met Steve. I’ve read the story and I forget it now, but that’s hardly important. What’s interesting is that a twenty-something electronic prodigy like Hebden (of Four Tet and Fridge) and a sixty-something jazz great (who recorded alongside Sun Ra, Miles Davis, etc.) found an instant life-bond through music, and have now collaborated on four releases. After hearing their impressive Exchange Sessions, which exercised the spirit of improvisation between their two genres, I looked forward to Tongues – a full record and, as hyped, their (official) musical statement.

Things begin promisingly with ‘The Sun Never Sets’, a proudly amateurish laser-beam melody that see-saws over Reid’s signature percussion. Hebden takes his loops of noise over the edge, absolutely, but since this record boasts that “all tracks are live takes with no overdubs or edits”, I expect some abrasive moments. On cue, ‘Brain’ dances in and is even better, showcasing a duo who do have an audible synergy together, trading the stage between busy drums and buzzing keyboards.

The pros of these unedited recordings are that you can trace their compatibility from the beginnings of collaboration. In Tongues, you can sense that Hebden and Reid are more comfortable with each other than on The Exchange Sessions; Hebden, especially, seems less hesitant to throw down electronic gauntlets and potentially step on Reid’s shoes. And while we can’t see them nod or give a thumbs-up while performing, you can feel when their improvisations hit upon a worthy groove and they decide to stick with it. ‘Our Time’ is a sedated beat with some pretty Four Tet flourishes, and is successful because they keep it simple.

The cons are that, most often, Tongues is spent looking for that worthy groove or making it complicated. ‘People Be Happy’ is a warm-up that never makes it to the race, settling on a boring drum score that shouldn’t be on disc. Sadly, there are several obvious cases of this meandering to study, as if proving that because neither know where to take these songs, they shrug and move on. I can write a better melody than ‘The Squid’ with a rock and some Kleenex, but that’s the point: so can Hebden. There are moments in nearly every song where it sounds like Hebden just wants Reid to toss him a bone (or basically do anything other than keep time on his drum-kit). Reid’s complacently dull drumming disarms some great contributions from Hebden, and usually gives him no other option but to drown the song in a barrage of effects.

I’m not arguing that talent is lacking here – there’s abundance in both brains behind this partnership, but if Tongues was supposed to be their statement, it’s a declaration of compromise.