Four Tet: Still a Joy

Its been over four years since Everything Ecstatic, Kieran Hebden’s last album under the banner of Four Tet, yet the prodigious Londoner has since kept the creative juices flowing with many other ventures. Together with jazz drummer Steve Reid, Hebden has released four albums and toured the world extensively several times.

This clearly wasn’t enough to satisfy his creative appetite as Hebden has also produced a mountain of remixes, performed DJ sets across the world and collaborated with reclusive dubstep producer Burial on a mysterious two track 12” that was released earlier this year. Modest to a fault, the producer from South London simply says “I have just been working on other things for the last five years and I’ve been enjoying collaborating with other people.” This may be a slight understatement.

His latest album, There is Love in You, is a natural result of Hebden’s desire to get back in the studio and continue the legacy he has created. “Over the last year I slowly started making straight up sequence electronic music,” begins Hebden. “Last year there was an EP out called Ringer. I enjoyed doing that so I thought about getting an album together. It is just me getting back to solo programmed electronic music.”

After the critical success of early releases Pause and Rounds, Hebden was hastily proclaimed to be the frontrunner of ‘folktronica’ by journalists who didn't take the time to understand the origin of his music. The producer still fiercely opposes the slogan. “Folktronica was just one of those random, horrendous moments of British music journalism,” claims Hebden. “People said I was doing something innovative but people like Timbaland had been having number one chart hits that used folk samples with hip-hop drums for years. It’s pathetic.”

Now in his thirties, Hebden has been producing music as Four Tet for over a decade and observes that his credibility does offer him certain luxuries: “Once you have done a lot of stuff and you have built up an audience, you earn the right to do things the way you want to. I am at a point where I am more in control of the way I do things.”

Upon listening to There is Love in You, expect to be left struggling to describe what's emerging from the speaker. But even if categorisation continues to elude his music, one thing that a sentimental cut like new single Love Cry assures is that Hebden can only be about to seduce a new generation of admirers with his electronic creations.