There Is Love In You by Four Tet
LABEL: Domino Recording Co.

For over a decade, Kieran Hebden has been pushing out a deeply textured thinking man’s brand of electronic knob twiddling under the moniker Four Tet. And while every effort he’s released into the wild has more or less succeeded to varying degrees, his latest, There Is Love In You, is easily (very easily) his finest and most broadly accessible work to date.

Not that Hebden’s work needs to be accessible to be good. There has always been something fascinating, powerful and appreciated about the level of experimentation he has embraced under the Four Tet flag. As a listener and lover of music, one of the greatest and most sought after sensations is to be surprised and exhilarated when impossibly unique and different sounds come pouring through a pair of speakers. Four Tet, on countless occasions, has produced foreign and delightfully unfamiliar tracks that are not only different but also quite engaging and frequently sonically enjoyable.

“After more than ten years in the lab and a lot of promising findings published along the way, There is Love In You is the fully-baked doctoral thesis...”

In a way, it’s almost helpful to view Four Tet as a high-level musical science experiment. In a quest to procure new truths and uncover previously unknown facts, experiments must be undertaken and new thinking must be employed. After more than ten years in the lab and a lot of promising findings published along the way, There is Love In You is the fully-baked doctoral thesis that correctly synthesizes all the variables into one incredible final product.

The album thumps open with the sweetly fragmented “Angel Echoes” that combines a spider web of clipped vocals with a chorus of diverse percussion. As the song unfolds, the intensity gradually builds. The pace quickens. And you suddenly realize this is the first Four Tet album you’ve heard that’s quite possibly appropriate for the living room stereo and listening in the company of others.

The opener is followed by the epic “Love Cry” that, after a four plus minute stretching session, explodes out of the blocks with walls of finely woven digital twitters, hazy vocal loops and a warm and fuzzy net of complicated drums and bass throbs. The entire album is good, but if there must be one ultimate stand out, it is definitely here.

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. 

“Genius is probably too strong a designation, but if there’s a word that rates just slightly below, it would be very much appropriate for describing Mr. Hebden and his latest work.”

If one were pressed to identify any deficiencies in There Is Love In You, a case could only be made for “This Unfolds,” a track that owes a bit to Private Press era DJ Shadow. It’s a great track. No denying it. But if there is any area where Four Tet seems to have let up on the experimental gas in some minor way, “This Unfolds” is the only evidence.

There Is Love In You is, in February 2010, destined to be one of the very finest albums released by any artist this year. Each subsequent listen yields incredible new depth and a growing appreciation for the album’s endless supply of truly thoughtful subtleties. Genius is probably too strong a designation, but if there’s a word that rates just slightly below, it would be very much appropriate for describing Mr. Hebden and his latest work. 


REVIEWED BY ALEC BRINEGAR
ALEC'S FAVORITE TRACKS: “Plastic People” • “Love Cry” • “Angel Echoes”


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