Four Tet - Fabriclive 59 (Mix Album Review)

Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet, has always pushed musical boundaries. Whether it be with his inimitable style of electronica - glitching up folk samples into haunting hip-hop melodies - or live laptop jamming with jazz drummers, he always manages to do something different and subvert expectations. With the release of his latest and most accessible album, There Is Love In You, he has found himself sitting alongside the likes of Joy Orbison and Pearson Sound on releases and line-ups alike. These pioneers are re-inventing bass music and Pearson Sound's recent Fabric Mix is a good example of where these new genres are headed. If you've come to terms with Four Tet's endless curve balling then you won't be as surprised to know that this mix doesn't pick up where Pearson Sound's left off.

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Four Tet - There Is Love In You (Album Review)

This has been far too long in the writing. Four Tet's latest album was my first purchase of the year (way back in January) and is still my favourite to date. There Is Love In You sees Kieran Hebden delivering the album that his previous works have hinted at. Tracks like 'Everything Is Alright' from Pause and 'She Moves She' from Rounds have highlighted how great a musician he is but are shining gems amongst the less accessible experimentation on each album. This LP really ties his sonic exploration with beautiful melodies and accessible listening across all nine tracks.

Album opener 'Angel Echoes' is just about as beautiful as any four minutes of your life are going to be. Its simple beat and chopped up female vocal smoothing out the album's title in varying arrangements beam down like broken rays of sunshine to be basked in. I would say that it makes my heart swell and my eyes brim if the second track wasn't called 'Love Cry'. It's nine minutes and thirteen seconds of skipping percussion and warbling whatever-it-is. This might sound like a lazy (or lack of) description but if you're familiar with Four Tet you'll understand where I'm coming from. His ability to take recorded noises and instruments then process them through his computer, loop, tinker, warp, reverse, stutter and screw them to the point of being only subconsciously familiar is instantly recognisable. 'Love Cry' is no different and the droning melody is either hot water heating the pipes in a creaky old house as the heating comes or a de-tuned synth. Of the two I'm inclined to believe the former as de-tuning a synth seems too easy and conventional for Hebden. Third song, 'Circling' is the sound track to landing on an alien planet lush with flora but loaded with uncertainty and probable danger. As exploration of this new landscape continues realisation dawns that the planet is not only safe but warm and welcoming too (you'll know what I mean if you've ever played Metroid Prime). The progression of this song is delightful, it starts with oddly off-beat, plucked strings that drift further and further out of time. They threaten to drag the track apart until a duplicate layer is introduced which counterpoints the original and provides the missing half of the melody. These moments thrive and diminish over and over, changing subtly each time so that by the end, the uneasiness of the opening minute has been replaced by pleasant familiarity. Using 'Pablo's Heart' as the tiniest of stepping stones, the listener is thrust headlong into 'Sing', a bouncing, glockenspiel-saturated dance track of the awkward shambling kind (that I'm so fond of). It also seems to use the vocal from Boris Dlugosch's 'Bangkok'.

I could go on like this for the remaining four songs but I think you're getting the point by now which is a) this is a brilliant album and b) i'm fully gay for Kieran Hebden. Do yourself a favour and buy the album, that way if this warm (well, bright) weather continues you'll have something dreamy to walk around to.

Four Tet - Angel Echoes on Spotify.

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