FOUR TET Vinyl & CDs

Review: Four Tet's Live at Alexandra Palace London 24th May 2023 captures the boundless energy of a live performance that effortlessly blends his signature electronic sound with the intimacy of a live setting. The opener 'School Green Romantics' builds slowly, layering intricate beats and subtle melodies, before escalating into a full-bodied rhythm that really commands attention. Tracks like 'Tides' take on a new life in this setting, with their intricate textures expanding and contracting, creating an immersive atmosphere that pulses with anticipation. Throughout, Four Tet's control over the crowd is palpable, using his deep knowledge of rhythm and melody to take listeners on a journey. A mesmerising live experience in every sense.

Review: Four Tet's live performance at Alexandra Palace delivers an immersive experience that blends intricate electronic soundscapes with undeniable dancefloor energy. The set opens with a subtle, hypnotic groove, gradually building in complexity and intensity as live drums and layered synths take centre stage. As the performance evolves, tracks like 'Sing' and 'Love Cry' explode with energy, effortlessly weaving between deep, ambient textures and vibrant, pulsing rhythms. The live setting offers a fresh dimension to the material, with each track feeling more expansive and dynamic. This is an exhilarating performance, showcasing Four Tet's ability to transform his recorded work into an electrifying live experience.

Review: Three is the long-awaited twelfth studio album by electronica titan Four Tet, following a long extended 'wildcard era' characterised by legal battles (well, one) and unlikely, curveball stints with fellow juggernauts Skrillex and Fred Again. But despite this judgment, Three hears Kieran Hebden return to his earliest forms, with the semi-eponymous 'Three Drums' recalling his earliest outcroppings emergent from his Fridge days, via slow, crisp breaks and serene string pads. 'Loved', similarly, evokes a 90s hip-hop, dare say Britcore fascination, melded with warmingly serene analogue pulsations, underlaid.

Review: It's been a hell of a long time since Kieran Hebden released a full-length album; Sixteen Oceans and Parallel both came out in 2020 and made for twin final inculcations of his twinkly, stellar dance sound. Three, by contrast, comes a full four years later and promises a return to a relaxed space for the artist, recalling the woodside studio space that facilitated his inauguration as a meme. Not quite abandoning the EDM bent, 'Daydream Repeat' recalls those earlier projects, but the likes of 'Three Drums' and 'Loved' are by contrast much more measured, soft-breaksy constructions in sound, recalling a more radical return to hip-hop than house.

Review: Four Tet is back with a new album of shimmering wonderment on his own Text label. As ever, it's the way that Kieran Hebden tugs at the heart strings so artfully that makes him so well-loved, and he's not holding back one iota as "Sixteen Oceans" opens up with the ineffably pretty "School". There's some advanced garage ruminations on "Baby", classic ambience on "Harpsichord", and so the eclectic and extremely soul-cleansing vibes continue across three sides of wax. In addition to this wonderful new album, Hebden has also held back the fourth side for a bunch of locked grooves so satisfying you could get lost in them all day.

Review: Originally released digitally in 2013, Pink collated a series of 12" releases from Kieran Hebden issued over an 18 month period on his Text label. Hebden and record club and subscription service Vinyl Me, Please have teamed up to give Pink a double vinyl release for any Four Tet fans that weren't quick enough to nab those 12"s at the time. There is plenty of classic Four Tet to be had here too. "Jupiters" experiments with swung garage beats in an unmistakably UK Bass style, while "128 Harps" is a whipcrack MPC workout given his light melodic touch and "Peace On Earth" is a beatless 11 minutes of analogue kosmische. But it's the centrepiece of Hebden's Fabriclive mix, the brilliantly moody "Pyramid", and the loose limbed jazz-house of "Pinnacles" that really set this album apart from his other long-playing efforts, two examples of timeless dance music which demonstrate why after nearly 15 years in the game Hebden is only improving with age.

Review: Given that Four Tet's recent 0181 LP was comprised of material from Kieran Hebden's archives, and last year's Pink was largely compiled of tracks from the previous 18 months of 12" releases, it seems fair to say that Beautiful Rewind is his first proper album since 2010's There Is Love In You, and as such, it arrives with some degree of expectation. The past few years have seen the producer engage increasingly with the dancefloor, and these rhythms are most definitely present across the LP, particularly in the jungle breaks of "Kool FM", pirate radio-influenced techno of "Buchla" and hesitant dubstep style rhythms of "Parallel Jalebi". For the most part however Beautiful Rewind is as varied as the likes of Rounds and There Is Love In You, with the minimalist kosmische of "Ba Teaches Yoga", analogue gurgles of "Crush" and dawn chorus sounds of closer "Your Body Feels" all as beautiful as his most enduring tracks.

Review: Given that Four Tet's recent 0181 LP was comprised of material from Kieran Hebden's archives, and last year's Pink was largely compiled of tracks from the previous 18 months of 12" releases, it seems fair to say that Beautiful Rewind is his first proper album since 2010's There Is Love In You, and as such, it arrives with some degree of expectation. The past few years have seen the producer engage increasingly with the dancefloor, and these rhythms are most definitely present across the LP, particularly in the jungle breaks of "Kool FM", pirate radio-influenced techno of "Buchla" and hesitant dubstep style rhythms of "Parallel Jalebi". For the most part however Beautiful Rewind is as varied as the likes of Rounds and There Is Love In You, with the minimalist kosmische of "Ba Teaches Yoga", analogue gurgles of "Crush" and dawn chorus sounds of closer "Your Body Feels" all as beautiful as his most enduring tracks.

Review: Released back in 2003, Rounds was the third LP from Kieran Hebden as Four Tet and perhaps the first long player that widely established him as a pioneering voice within electronic music. Though it doesn't feel like a decade since it was released, Domino celebrate the album's tenth anniversary in requisite fashion here, reissuing it in double LP format and slipping in a CD of Four Tet performing live in Copenhagen in 2004. Listening back now, it's easy to understand why Rounds is viewed as an early classic in the Four Tet canon, transferring his love for free jazz records to a beat template that's more palatable on the ear (Fact pickers might want to know that Hebden recently revealed to Pitchfork the LP was made entirely from samples) "She Moves She" still sounds absolutely haunting too!

Review: After hitting on something of a formula with 'Only Human', this A-side banger is further proof that Four Tet is onto a rich vein of side hustle action with his KH alter ego. 'Looking At Your Pager' is a cheeky slice of '90s throwback-ism in jackin' house form, and in a heuristically Hebden-esque style, makes deft use of the hilariously autotuned opening verse heard in 3LW's girl band hit, 'No More'. It's a very clever tune; just as no-one uses pagers anymore, nor do people use the kind of dubstep wobbles heard underneath the track's clacking groove... Mr. KH makes them cool again!

Review: A collaborative new single by sampletronic master Kieran Hebden (aka. Four Tet) and guitarist and composer William Tyler, two acclaimed musicians and both longstanding friends. Part of a recent spewing-forth of Hebden-adjacent material to hit the shelves after the artist's oft-reported-upon "agent of chaos" phase, these two tracks, pressed to a furtive 12", provide a neat counterpoint to that assessment. Rather than a pair of riddim bangers, the record flaunts Hebden's signature electronic textures and Tyler's guitar into a hypnotic, nominally dark soundwhirl, reminiscent of the earliest days of Text, but with a unique edge - a sonic corner never quite scoured before by either artist.