Four Tet
There Is Love in You
Rating: 3.5/5.0
Label: Domino
Is anyone else blown away by the fact that Kieran Hebden has been making music for 15 years? As a guitarist in 1995, he co-founded UK post-rock trio Fridge, much to the pleasure of my ears (OK, I was 10, so, eventually) and grunged-out hipsters/critics the world over. Hebden has since made a solo-career of lo-fi experimentation under the Four Tet moniker, cutting and pasting samples with surgical precision over live instrumentation into otherwise melodic, organic compositions. It’s been five years since his last proper full-length, Everything Ecstatic, but Hebden hasn’t wasted a minute–There Is Love in You bears clear influence from his substantial and varied work over the past half-decade. Collaborations with jazz drummer Steve Reid and dubsteppers-du-jour Burial, the techno-flavored Ringer EP and a slew of remixes all inform the sound of a record that extends Four Tet’s most distinctive qualities into unexplored territory.
Hypnotic dance grooves take center stage on many of these tracks with lead-single “Love Cry” setting the early tone. Its mesmerizing two-step is layered beneath a build of whirring synth, fractured vocals and glitched-out bleep that sounds like a 56k modem on the fritz. “Sing” is just as captivating, built on the persistent repetition of what could be 8-bit video-game effects, and ‘Plastic People” would be danceable if it weren’t so minimal. A synth yelp and sparse handclaps come and go in waves over a skeleton melody and simple low-end pulse. With Burial-like spaciousness Hebden has embraced repetition, splitting the difference between his own back catalog and the likes of Fuck Buttons’ Tarot Sport.
Other cuts spotlight the delicate tunefulness that separated Hebden’s Rounds from his contemporaries in experimental electronica and IDM. “Circling” follows the rousing “Love Cry” with a glowing chaos of synth loops that gradually coalesce into a haunting melody; reminiscent of Four Tet’s 2008 remix of Born Ruffians’ “I Need a Life.” The well-titled “This Unfolds” sets post-rock guitar over a deep hip hop bump, but spacey synth grows steadily, morphing the arrangement into Four Tet’s familiar brand of organic dreaminess. It’s painstakingly intricate songwriting, as fresh as Joy Orbison, that finds strength in the flawless integration of several genres into Hebden’s spacious patchwork soundscapes.
Of course the same could have been said about Everything Ecstatic. That 2005 effort was certainly more daring than 2003′s breakthrough Rounds, trading easy groove and surreal melody for a faster, more chaotic, jazz-inspired sound. But the result was a step backward–a mere reactionary distancing from the ‘folktronica’ tag that tracks like “She Moves She” had saddled him with. And this album is not without its flaws either. Its latter stages do lag but that’s a sin easily forgiven upon returning to opener “Angel Echoes.” There Is Love in You sees Hebden return to the euphoria and accessibility of Rounds though he no longer resembles the artist who produced that seminal work. Five years with friends have returned to us an aggressively forward-thinking Four Tet who’s further refined the ability to work its technological minimalism under your skin.
by Brady Baker
