About

Despite closing out Coachella's main stage and playing open to close at Madison Square Garden last year—both alongside Skrillex and Fred again..— Kieran Hebden, on his 12th studio album as Four Tet, explores atmospheric ambient more thoroughly than he has in more than a decade. His DJ sets may be getting increasingly rowdy, featuring everything from tongue-in-cheek EDM drops to "O Tannenbaum" from A Charlie Brown Christmas, but the music he produces has never succumbed to that kind of instant gratification or gotcha mentality. Three is the opposite, with its serene sense of calm and drawn-out, meditative excursions that look as far back as Hebden's snug post-rock days.

Each of these tracks is anchored by a similarly understated drum kit, a subtle mechanism to keep the music in forward motion while the melodies are free to travel as they please. Hebden does, of course, leave room for some driving club tracks. "Daydream Repeat," with its signature crispy drum pattern, delivers an exhilarating rush of feverish noise that does a jaw-dropping 180 into yet another fabulous harp melody and a bubbly bassline. "31 Bloom" is more introspective, going darker and sparser with its dubby synth stabs and muted toms.

The finishing touch on the album is actually the first track, "Loved." It wasn't until Hebden's close friends and collaborators Caribou and Floating Points gifted him a Terra synth that he was able to write the missing piece, creating what sounds like an immediate relative of one of his most beloved tracks, "Two Thousand and Seventeen." The way he calls back to nearly all of his past projects, one could make the mistake that Hebden's best years are behind him. That would be missing the point, though. Regardless of all the attention he's received from his massive performances, he's still looking for new ways to be Four Tet. — (via Resident Advisor)

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Label: Text Records
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: UK & US
Released: 2024
Genre: Electronic
Style: Ambient, Downtempo, Experimental

File under: Downtempo
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