There hasn’t been anything wrong as such with the previous collaborations between Kieran “Four Tet” Hebden and veteran drummer Steve Reid. Despite their flashes of brilliance, though, it’s been hard to shake off the feeling Hebden and Reid could churn out a daily dose of the kind of entirely improvised, occasionally electrifying but – perhaps inevitably in a project built on spontaneity – often meandering jazz-electro fusion unveiled on the two ‘Exchange Session’ albums and last year’s ‘Tongues’. The result’s been a generous helping of music that comes tantalisingly close, but never quite fully fulfils, the spellbinding potential of this groundbreaking, genre-busting musical union; almost as if the musicians, freed from the constraints of working to a previously agreed script by the improvisation-heavy setup, are coasting a bit, admiring the previously uncharted musical territory they’re charting, more interested in pleasing themselves than creating sounds that could get the duo’s evident excitement about their experiment across to the listener.
Until now, that is. Sharpened by months of touring, during which the six cuts heard here were first germinated and developed, ‘NYC’ unveils a more focused, tighter take on Hebden and Reid’s musical barrier-hopping, forward-gazing aural assault which, thankfully, hasn’t lost any of its appealing looseness in the process. The sounds akin to the whir of a mighty jet engine stirring to life Hebden unleashes at one point during the propulsive bounce of opener ‘Lyman Place’ couldn’t be more appropriate. Whilst not perfect (some of the lengthy tracks are dragged out a few minutes past their sell-by date, and ‘25th Street’ wounds up stack in a tepid pool of noodling),‘NYC’ captures an exciting experiment nearing fruition, as Hebden and Reid accomplish what’s so far often eluded this joint project: playing together, rather than chucking their respective stock in trades – an awe-inspiring prowess in the percussive department for Reid (drums have rarely sounded this huge and thrillingly alive), a comprehensive mastery of sound manipulation, be it sampling or letting loose a couple of compulsively funky guitar licks, for Hebden – at each other, hoping that at some point they’ll locate a groove that can harmoniously accommodate both.
There’s plenty of those special moments here, from the aforementioned ‘Lyman Place’ to the scratchy funk of ‘1st & 1st’, the eerie dreaminess of ‘Departure’ and ‘Arrival’, which combines a monumental groove with outbreaks of melancholy jangle. Although the tracks aren’t much more than extended explorations of a riff, a groove or a theme, the duo’s newfound interest in maintaining a danceable pulse, perhaps inspired by Four Tet’s techno-flavoured ‘Ringer’ EP, combined with the musicians’ dedication to throwing in enough subtle twists and turns to ensure endless opportunities for discovery for the attentive listener, guarantees the proceedings rarely drag.
