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Avg: 4.0 (71 ratings)
- Date Released: May 31, 2005
- Genre: Electronic
- Style: Abstract
- Label: Domino Recording Co
Another labyrinthine classic from Kieran Hebdan
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We Say...
One of Kieran Hebden's more aggressive outings under the Four Tet moniker, Everything Ecstatic veers away from the rustic acoustic guitar loops which, for better or worse, came to represent his earlier work. Here, he replaces those sounds with low-pitched synth rumbles, buried beneath the drum machines like the unrelenting drone of a factory assembly line. There's still a familiar tenderness to the piano-driven reflection "And Then Patterns," but it contrasts heavily with songs like "Joy," on which his usual precise scripting is deliberately blurred and much harder to parse. "Sun Drums and Soil" is the towering success, easily among the best tracks of his career, but it's probably "High Fives" that serves as the best snapshot of this stage in the evolution, with the husky new background grunts meeting infantile xylophone melodies and punctuated by pointedly electronic filters and volume swells. The replay value comes primarily from swimming through all the details, which aren't necessarily intricate, but are impossible to keep track of just the same: fading cymbal crashes and subtly pulsing bass lines seem to pop up everywhere you turn, usually stemming from a starting point four bars back which you missed because, well, there was something else going on back there too.
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They Say...
Kieran Hebden had every right to retreat from the folktronica tag stapled to his Four Tet recordings. Although he was the premier name in the sub-subgenre, and although his productions transcended even the cutest label that could be attached to them, the folktronica term was too clever by half; more importantly, no respectable artist in the indie underground can stand idly by while he's being pigeonholed. Nevertheless, the left turn Hebden has taken into jumpy Krautrock with 2005's Everything Ecstatic will make listeners yearn for the clever, nuanced productions he turned in on Pause and Rounds; fortunately, he hasn't completely forsaken his old ways. Early in the program, Hebden sounds more clearly derivative than he ever has; the spotlight track "Smile Around the Face" has one of Kanye West's chipmunk divas blandly merging into a sunny-day Avalanches production. "Sun Drums and Soil" begins with the menacing bell tones of an Autechre track and ends with the blatting horns of a free jazz workout, but the barrage of a percussion section never relents over six minutes. "Clouding," a criminally short interlude, is a turning point for Everything Ecstatic -- all of the album's best moments occur on the second half (and they are very good). "Turtle Turtle Up" and the shifting epic "Sleep, Eat Food, Have Visions" are nominally electro productions, but they're some of the oddest and most attentively produced electro tracks to ever appear on record. (On the latter, the slight influences of the Orb are assimilated into the whole, not pasted on top.) The final track, "You Were There With Me," transforms the sound of Balinese gongs into an isolated, nightmarish production with only a faint heartbeat for a rhythm track. Hopefully, using Everything Ecstatic as necessary distance, Hebden can either return to the sound of his early records or transform his new direction into styles worthy of his production talents.
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| 01. |  |
A Joy |
3:05 |
|
| 02. | |
Smile Around the Face |
4:34 |
|
| 03. |
Fuji Check |
0:23 |
|
|
| 04. | |
Sun Drums and Soil |
6:20 |
|
| 05. | |
Clouding |
1:44 |
|
| 06. | |
And Then Patterns |
4:44 |
|
| 07. | |
High Fives |
5:08 |
|
| 08. | |
Turtle Turtle Up |
2:09 |
|
| 09. | |
Sleep, Eat Food, Have Visions |
7:59 |
|
| 10. | |
You Were There With Me |
5:52 |
|
10 Total Tracks, 41:58 Total Length
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Credits
- Kieran Hebden - Producer // Kieran Hebden - Producer // Jason Evans - Photography // Sean Magee - Mastering // Matthew Cooper - Layout Design // Simon Foxton - Photography
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