A clearing of the airwaves, a flick of the “on” button, and Keiran Hebden is formally ready to return. Although far from out of action in the four years since his previous record, ‘Everything Ecstatic’, an arrival in the new decade seems suitable, as his sound of naturally-built electronica breeds new life and continues to develop. As heads are turning towards newly-establishing pioneers - Joy Orbison the biggest name amongst them - Four Tet is carefully reminding us all of who’s the daddy.
‘There Is Love In You’ isn’t as gentle as its title may suggest: although closer ‘She Just Likes To Fight’ commences with the sound of a child playing with a xylophone, before surrounding the listeners with gentle drum patterns and swift guitar melodies, it’s applied at the end of the record to signify a contrast in-between itself and what precedes it. The bulk of Hebden’s fifth studio album can sit pretty with a walk in an industrial city; the sound of traffic drowning out the music, as concrete slabs, intimidating buildings and miserable faces are the only visual companion. On face value, this doesn’t do ‘There Is Love...’ much justice, as it’s a record capable of working both as background music and as “4am music”: the kind that deserves your fullest attention, allowing you to engage yourself within the subtle twists and turns that come in excess with this record.
‘Love Cry’ for example, is mercilessly repetitive, as a London suburb drum beat kicks and kicks at your eardrums, it’s only until the final minute-and-a-half of the allocated eight that the poignant guitar melody arrives. But on close inspection, Hebden teases the listener with it two minutes in - for a split-second you hear the same melody, drenched in reverb, ready for action. To anticipate it is to essentially spoil the heart-swelling drama of the first time it hits you, be it in complete isolation or surrounded by commuters on the underground. It is rare to hear an album so fitting for the city atmosphere. This in turn is degrading the songs as monotonous. More often than not, they are. But at the same time, they’re astonishingly beautiful.
It’s a difficult one to get your head around, yes. But Hebden remains perhaps the only club-setting DJ to have a mind-frame determined to provoke an appreciation of beauty in his music. From ‘Sing’’s sweeping chop-and-change state to ‘Plastic People’ and ‘Circling”s night-time atmosphere, you, as the listener, find yourself surprised every time something sonically grabs you, rinsing out the normality of a song and replacing it with something stark and stunning. In ‘There Is Love In You’, moments like these come in plenty.
by Jamie Milton
Tags: Four Tet
Four Tet - 'There Is Love In You' (Domino) Released 25/01/2010
Rinsing out the normality of a song and replacing it with something stark and stunning...
