There Is Love in You
Audio CD
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£7.84
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Reviewer
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Four Tet, alongside his contemporary Burial (who Kieran Hebdan aka Four Tet did a 12'' with called Moth/Wolf Cub) has a knack for producing electronic music with real soul. Just listen to the chopped up vocals repeating the album title on first track 'Angel Echoes', or the way 'Plastic People' cleverly samples 60's girl-group The Chiffons 'Nobody Knows What's Going On' to nostalgic effect. Some people may be perturbed that Hebden has chosen such rigid and traditional structures for this album, but I feel confident that this is him tinkering with a well-worn formula and squeezing something new out of it, 'til his next album which will be something different entirely. 'Love Cry' may seem (dare I say) dull for the first four minutes with a continuous drum-loop, but when the hissing vocal eases in it felt to me like the wait was worth it for the euphoric lift. Last song 'She Just Likes to Fight' loses the beat but replaces it with a guitar melody so effortlessly evocative that it makes me pity those bands that try to meld dance and indie to such clunky effect (cough* Delphic, Klaxons, cough*). This is a wonderful album that only evades five stars because I know Four Tet is capable of even more. Here's to whatever he does next!
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Lumbered with the 'folk-tronica' tag that never really made much sense, the appeal of Kieran Hebden's music to me has always been the organic feel that his use of sampled acoustic instruments brings to proceedings. On his latest release which is his most overtly 'dance' oriented record yet, a result of his DJ sessions at Plastic People, he still manages to retain something of that organic feel, whilst providing an evocative soundtrack for my walk through the city.
Angel Echoes is a beautiful beginning with an ethereal, sampled female vocal and swirling chimes that somehow smooth over the rigid time signature. That ethereal sound is repeated several times on the album, particularly with the female vocals. Love Cry is the first bona-fide dance track, nine minutes of deep-house with the all the build-up and break-down you'd expect from a floor-filler, and Hebden's trademark harpsichord-like strings and electronic squawks and bleeps. Circling is a deceptively simple track reminiscent of Boards Of Canada, the rolling 6/8 rhythm creating what feels like layer upon layer of competing melodies circling around each other (when in fact they're all working together). Sing is another one for the dance-floor, almost seven minutes combining electronic sounds with far more ethnic-sounding drums and percussion and another ethereal vocal that sighs and reaches rather than sings. This Unfolds is another lengthy track at close to eight minutes, but with a slow, chilled-out feeling which somehow manages to contain a vast array of echoing whistles, percussive elements, and its lead melody without ever feeling over-loaded and cacophonous. Reversing, as the title implies, contained reversed samples in its short ambient pause before those DJ sets unleash the track that bears the club night's name, Plastic People. Rattling percussion shakes alongside the insistent house beats and another chimed melody. It's the kind of track that deserves a summer night, and which in a chilly February provides me with something of a Ready Brek glow. The album finishes with She Just Loves To Fight, closer to what you might have expected from previous Four Tet releases, a pleasant, sunny amble and a pleasant end to proceedings.
There are two things that make Four Tet's electronica stand out for me. Firstly there is a pleasing complexity to the sounds he collages together. Each successive listen allows you to identify something new, and by focussing on one particular theme the same track can give a different kind of enjoyment each time. There is also something soulful and heartfelt about his music (literally on Pablo's Heart which is an 11 second recording of his godson's heartbeat) which makes it far more palatable than the sterility of much electronica and far more likely to entice you back for further listens. Hebden has said that he wants his album releases to be like documents of his own musical journey and this latest is like a collaborative effort between him and the Plastic People crowd, with tracks tested and developed in response to them. But included amongst those dance oriented tracks are sounds and samples that lie like hidden treasure and come from a very personal place - 'I always put little references to my life in the music I've made'.
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This record is more club-oriented than its predecessors; it namechecks Shoreditch sweatbox Plastic People. Coincidently, moments of the record remind me of former Shoreditch artist Towers of Asia and the influence of Burial is clearly evident.
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Firstly, let me state that I am a fan of Four Tet so I had this album preordered from the word go. With this in mind let me start by emphatically stating that this album will not necessarily appeal to fans of his first three releases, and is more in line with the eponymous four track EP released in 2008. You can still tell it's Four Tet, but Hebden has all but traded in the seductive ambience of his earlier work. As with the EP, every track here is underpinned by an overbearing four-to-the-floor kick, with mere hints at his earlier subtlety.
There are standout tracks, notably the closing track, 'She Just Likes to Fight', but most of what is on offer here does not rank with the majority of 'Pause' or 'Rounds', and much of it sounds like leftovers from Orbital's Brown album. Once you accept this and take the time to listen what is going on beyond the thumping kick drum, there is much to be appreciated here. Sadly though, it doesn't really feel like Hebden has progressed as a musician in the past eleven years. If anything, this album feels more like the work of someone who is content to take advantage of his fans.
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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.
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