Four Tet

The 2000s marked the definitive triumph of indie culture, transformed from a niche phenomenon into mass culture, essentially thanks to one factor: the internet. For millions of kids, the web replaced TV, radio and newspapers as a source of information; but even before that, it proved to be a revolutionary means of communication. Peer-to-peer networks, forums and chat rooms gave rise to a population with no center and no geographical borders, yet curiously uninterested in the collective dimension of music.

If there's one style that embodies this contradiction, it's the indietronica of which "Rounds" is the masterpiece. Electronic music, made on a computer, that nevertheless bids farewell to abstract landscapes and the more alienating dance pulses. Like the computer itself, it has by now become fully embedded in everyday life. It no longer expresses the desire to escape from one's own bedroom, but rather to stay in it. And to live there peacefully with the same old emotions: happiness, melancholy, love.

It opens with a beating heart, "Hands", and immediately wraps you in a cocoon of light and swirling colour. The rhythm is calm, a slowed-down hip-hop free of any unease. If there's one thing that strikes you, it's how thin the line is between this thoroughly digital music and the warm, intimate atmosphere of acoustic music. It's the insight of Kieran Hebden, a twenty-four-year-old Anglo-Indo-South African based in London: use the computer, but borrow sounds from old folk vinyl, to create music that is shy, comforting, and full of genuine emotion. That's the whole essence of folktronica right there, but Four Tet - the young man's stage name - arrived at it by an indirect route, through an all-round musical passion that is itself, at bottom, a symbol of the new era.

Kieran Hebden loves jazz, hip-hop, post-rock, and a couple of years earlier had released his first solo album: "Dialogue". But it's his infatuation with American r'n'b productions, together with a new passion for British folk, that pushes him towards richer sounds. From the former he gets the urge to broaden his sonic palette; in the latter he finds exactly the warm, bucolic textures he's searching for. "As Serious As Your Life" is the paradigm of what he has in mind: the melodic theme is a very brief acoustic guitar snippet "lifted" from the by-then completely forgotten French folk group Malicorne; the track, however, follows its own path, climbing through hip-hop rhythms and hand claps in a mood that is both mellow and effervescent.

"She Moves She" lays bare the rules of the game - and, above all, that it is indeed a game. An extremely refined take-apart-and-reassemble exercise in which Kieran Hebden sums up everything about himself. First, the basic sound material is laid out: three or four samples, no more. A bit of harp, a few bells, a nice dry, asymmetrical beat. Then come the loops, the layering, the interlocking in the most varied combinations, following the flow of emotion. Sometimes the flow settles down, sometimes it's interrupted by sudden digital intrusions in the form of glitches, sounds out of place. But it's above all the rhythmic side that draws out Hebden's creativity. He often lets the other samples repeat in the background, bringing the drum track to the fore to subject it to a thousand transformations and recombinations. As in drum'n'bass and its mutant offshoot, drill'n'bass, but with a balance and taste all of its own. Rather than bristly and cerebral, his are beats that lodge themselves in your head instantly in every variation. Four Tet's rhythmic craft marries catchiness and surprise with real class: in "They All Look Broken Hearted", a very gentle three-quarter pattern bursts in over a jumbled spread of jazz rolls and cymbal hits, right when you'd expect a heavier beat to emerge from it.

It's a game, it even has something childlike about it, but like real children's games, it conceals an entire way of relating to the world. Curiosity, candour, a wish to be amazed: all of this surfaces in "Spirit Fingers", a whirl of sounds and visions rooted in the minimalism of composer Terry Riley and in Indonesian gamelan music. Not only that: this carousel of tin-tin sounds and silvery timbres used as percussion, just like the two styles it draws from, has something hypnotic or ecstatic about it. It seems to lead straight to a peace of the senses. But the Nirvana it promises - and this is a crucial point - is not some alien world or a Saturday-night euphoria: it's right there before your eyes, in everyday things. This is Four Tet's magic art: he manages to illuminate the world around him, to make you see it again through a child's eyes. It's clear now how "Rounds" goes beyond the imprecise folktronica label. It is, rather, epiphanic music, of an elusive beauty because it's hidden not in things themselves, but in the way of looking at them. It's the ray of sunlight coming through the window that lights up the colours of an otherwise dull day. It's "My Angel Rocks Back And Forth", a dark trip-hop track that turns out to be sweet and drowsy thanks to a shy puff of harp; it's the "quack" of the rubber duck that slips into the dreamy crescendo of "Slow Jam". A smile, the simplest thing of all, that will never stop moving you.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

31/10/2010