More about: Four Tet

An illustrious force like no other, Grammy nominated producer and musician Four Tet is not someone who accepts creative boundaries with ease. Always experimenting, the London born electronic artist is more inventive than ever. 

A genuine pioneer within his field, he started to gain wide popularity in the late ‘90s, and fast forward twenty years, he remains prolific, staying as true to his values and ethos as before. Admired within the global dance community, he continues to add to the sizeable volume of recorded work. 

The esteemed host of an all-day mini festival in North London’s Finsbury Park, Kieran Hebden is due to appear, supported by DJs and artists such as Hagop Tchapian, Josey Rebelle, Anish Kumar and Gracie t b2b with DJ Priya and many more, it’s a line-up that showcases South Asian talent in the community acting as a first step into the music industry. 

The chosen area of the park is striking. While the tree-lined carriageway works aesthetically, it also comes to act as an ideal supplier of shade, which is high demand on this penultimate day of the heatwave. 

With a vibe that is friendly, inclusive and chilled, surroundings and setting are well-chosen, and Four Tet’s super-eclectic five hour dance feast can begin. While the curated set plays with a wide range of genres, it is a fun, probing space where anything can happen. But fair play to Hebden, he also understands the need for popular crowd pleasers, and he is more than happy to cater for the demand.

The first two hours consist of relaxed, breezy tracks that lend themselves well to the thirty something degrees. It allows people to hang out with their friends and enjoy cold drinks before the pace is brought up a notch or two in the third and fourth hour, which again enables a climax to be reached in the fifth hour. It’s a perfect way to build and push the event forward, it works as a music event, and it makes sense to tell a story at the same time. 

Relishing the warm summer vibes, the setting and the music, there are couples, groups of friends and individuals, they are all dancing, moving to the beats or are engaged in conversation. Standalone moments are captured on smartphones, while others are eating street food or drinking wine. 

Smiling, looking at the crowd, Hebden seems curious to take in every bit of detail, every situation that plays out in the front of the stage. He is truly present, not just some random DJ on a stage, he is showing curiosity, taking an interest in what’s going on around him, he wants people to have a fantastic time. Every now and then the crowd produce massive, triumphant cheers in enthusiastic support of what they are witnessing.   

As a production it is just right, had this been an inside event, however, more elaborate tricks might have been needed, but the coloured spotlights and luminescent lasers do a nice job.  

Building the set around a selection of his own remixes, Hebden excels at bringing together elements of jazz, techno, acid, reggae, south Asian sounds and mainstream pop, creating a vigorous, explosive blend of absorbing dance tracks. The one intriguing question that persists is where else do you get to dance to covers of Sugababes, Ariana Grande, Donna Lewis or Caribou for that matter? The answer seems to be; nowhere. 

Unrivalled in ambition and execution Four Tet’s five hours of club music only increase the crowd’s appetite for more, while an illustrious soundtrack is curated in the process. It is an inspired cultural encounter on one of the warmest, loveliest days of the year. 

See photos by Marlowe Turner below:

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More about: Four Tet