Kieran Hebden seems like a swell chap, one blessed with endless
enthusiasm for music, who rakes through the shelves of record stores,
plunders the 'pods of his touring pals, and waves the flag for the folk
whose art he loves. So, uh, I hope that it doesn't get back to Hebden
that the kids — those kids who record-shop and file-swap with the same
endless enthusiasm as he — call his musical outlet, alternately, Snore
Tet and Bore Tet, or that many, even those minus an axe to grind, think him
things like "the most overrated electronic artist ever." See, whilst
Hebden's tender and gentle and awful sentimental regarding love and art,
when it comes to making his own music, as Four Tet, he suddenly seems
like the Tin Man, his emotionless instrumentalism as empty as a kettle,
his shiny metal a façade, frontin', masking the fact that nothing's
beating underneath. Everything Ecstatic, his fourth Four Tet
longplayer, finds Hebden's signature spattered drum-breaks and twinkling
tuned percussion forming that same familiar pattern: the one that
rescinds into the background, matches the carpet, and flatters the
furniture. Whilst people forever slag off the rare-groove dudes of the
nu-jazz massive for their wallpaperist soundtrackism, no one — well,
save for those clued-up kids who most would (wrongly) assume were
Hebden's core fanbase — would dare slander Four Tet's thickly-woven
sample pastiches at having the same unimposing aural qualities. Even
though, y'know, they do (and you know they do).
That's not to say that
this disc doesn't start off with some promise, with Hebden drawing initial
inspiration from Lightning Bolt as he commences proceedings matching
heavily distorted bass throb with belligerent drums; this bleeds and
leads into the second song ("Smile Around the Face"), which matches a
chipmunked vocal to shapeshifted breaks that cut in and out, Hebden,
here, authoring a love letter to the pursuit of happiness in the same
sort of scrawl as the wonky-pop party tunes peddled by The Avalanches
and the wannabe Avalanches (AKA the Go! Team). His party peaks too
early, though, with the gear soon settling into a middling middle, where
the songs start to sound less distinct, and the changes start to become
less pronounced, and interest starts to lag, and where, eventually, like
a desperate host hoping to keep the party going, Hebden stacks on break
after break in a gallant attempt to remind you that the disc is actually
playing, and that the night ain't as old as this feels.
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