AudioFile : Four Tet

Independent Music Artist

FOUR TET
TEXT: Devi ||| PHOTO: Jason Evans ||| LABEL: Domino Records

There is meaning and purpose in Four Tet’s music. His style remains ambiguous, though some might think and dismiss it as techno on first listen. Yes, it’s electronic, but the complicated and sometimes disguised layers of hip-hop, jazz, folk and soul (along with other genres) fused beneath it all make Four Tet a compelling artist with so much cross-over appeal.

What binds it all together? The answer lies in the creative brain of Kieran Hebden. Hailing from London, England, this music impassioned electronica wiz has made quite a name for himself since his May 1999 debut, Dialogue, released on Output Recordings. He began his music career playing guitar for the college band Fringe and, soon after, established his solo career by remixing Aphex Twin. The intelligent music listening world took notice, and he quickly became known for his wide blend of genres and styles.

Much of Hebden’s early forays were based on a deep rooted love of free jazz.

“[Jazz is] a backbone for a lot of what I do,” Hebden said in an interview with Pitchfork. “I grew up listening to rock, soul and jazz. When I was at university, I started checking out some free jazz records, lots of 70s Miles Davis and late 60s Impulse. It was like music I wished existed.”

His first album, Dialogue, had strong jazz leanings. In his following record, Pause released on Domino Records in May of 2001, he strayed from these tendencies and helped to create a new genre, labeled by some as “folktronica.”

“I abandoned the whole jazz thing — not because I wasn’t into it any more, but because I suddenly started thinking about what was possible with this project and where it could go,” Hebden said to Sound on Sound.

Pause was followed by two more records over the next couple of years, Rounds (2003) and Everything Ecstatic (2005). At this point in his career, he was in high demand as a remixer as well, collaborating with a variety of artists like Radiohead, Madvillian, Beth Orton, Rothko and Bloc Party. Some of this work can be found on his self-compiled 2xCD album Remixes (2006) which also featured his original compositions being remixed by others. Additional collaborations include work with the late greats Steve Reid and J Dilla, Tom Yorke and pioneering the dubsteppers, Burial.

Hebden’s approach to music is highly specialized and highly disciplined. This is almost expected because the possibilities of computer based recording are endless. Like a paradox of production, his sounds that seem so spontaneous at times are actually meticulously calculated.

“Everything I do has some sort of anchor in there that holds it,” Hebden told Sound on Sound. “The more difficult part is coming up with ideas and starting points for tracks that have some real substance behind them, both in terms of emotional content and musical ideas."

There is a personal aspect warmly glazed onto everything he does. Like a songwriter using lyrics to describe deeply personal life experiences, Hebden incorporates real-life recordings into his mixes. “Pablo’s Heart,” from FT’s most recent LP, There Is Love In You, uses a live-recording of his godson’s premature heartbeat. He makes use of the little sounds in life too: the screeching of a toy, a rubber duck, or the whining of an irritated sister.

“There aren’t lyrics or anything in my music,” Hebden told Pitchfork. “I don’t have any explicit thing for people to read into, so I like putting a lot of personal touches in the music. If I bare my soul in bits and make it personal, I think people can sense that when they hear it. I don’t know what it is. People read into the music. I have a feeling that they can believe that I’m trying to put some emotion forward. It’s not just some technical exercise.”

Four Tet’s live performances take on a different character with real-time computer improvisation.

“My live shows are way more glitchy and aggressively mashed-up than the stuff I’m doing on the record,” Hebden said in Sound on Sound. “I allow the record to be more subtle, because it’s something you want to be able to listen to again and again, whereas the live thing I’m quite happy for everything to be mad and distorted and out of time, because I’m just trying to capture a moment.”

Four Tet has expanded the possibilities of technology based music and has proved to us that computers are instruments too and should be treated as such.

“People performing behind laptops doesn’t have to be boring, so long as you believe you’re doing something musically challenging,” Hebden said in an interview with Audioscope.

After all, nerds are artists too.

PRESS

"His appetite for music, on the evidence presented in his albums, singles, DJ sets, and collaborations, is voracious. But Hebden has a way of transforming and integrating influences rather than channeling them." —Pitchfork

“Throughout the disc, Four Tet consistently showcases his near surgical abilities to stitch together bits and pieces of organic, folksy sound with the robotic, repetitive electronic elements of modern digital production. The result is, as it has always been, rare warmth that is often absent from so much of the work produced by Hebden’s modern industry contemporaries.” — Groovemine

LINKS

+ Four Tet official website
+ Four Tet on Soundcloud
+ Four Tet on Myspace
+ Four Tet on Facebook
+ Four Tet on Twitter

DOWNLOADS