Four Tet Remixes

What better way to describe Kieran Hebden, the man who is a quartet as Four Tet, than to use Mister Boom Bip’s quote about the Tet: “You have to be somewhat intelligent…to understand and appreciate his music.” Okay, so it feels a tad obnoxious, but whenever
reviewing Four Tet, I find myself always discussing him in terms of jazz dudes, which shouldn’t be such a shock, since his debut, Dialogue does share a title with jazz-vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson’s debut (probably intentional). This may be why his swinging laptop work takes a backseat to Caribou’s more palatable (and to me, more snoozing) shoegaze rock rips. And may be why I prefer him to just about anyone else in this field. But then again, I am somewhat intelligent and henceforth do understand his music (sniff). In a recent piece about Everything Ecstatic (Domino), I note how this time around, there’s less Incredible String Band, more Incredible Bongo Band, and how it feels a tad more banged-out, but the jazzbo tendencies still flourish. Not that he’ll ever be Philly Joe Jones or Elvin Jones, but such rhythmic thought courses through the computer beats. On something like Boom Bip’s “Third Stream,” it’s grounded by a walking bassline and snapping bit of tight-lipped hi-hats, which FourTet can knock out in his sleep. The bassline that Hebden uses to underpin the downtempo trip-hop of Bonobo on “Pick Up” recall those mammoth, yet delicate tones that Jimmy Garrison would thrum out with the John Coltrane Quartet. Gossamer and silken, yet able to support (and make swing) the enormous gravity of an elephant (or maybe, to make some sort of pseudo-spiritual sense, Ganesh). With no locomotive modal blasting from a Coltrane to force it along, Hebden instead goes glitchy, with little noises flitting about at its core.

For his side-long remixing of the dense (and to me, slightly overrated) Madvillainy disc, he tries to one-up the dusty fingers of Madlib with a little bit more skronk (peep the crazed percussion halfway through “Money Folder” for example). The silverware clatter that he dumps on “Meat Grinder” gets mashed in with some horn work that could chirp alongside Braxton, Holland and co. on Conference of the Birds or when Braxton and Jarman threw it all in on the sonic-searching Together Alone, a fine example of post-AEC duo work. Buoyed by that bedspring as mbira beat, Doom’s verses make for some high-protein chewing, which is where such grindin’ helps to break it all down.

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