Four Tet, There Is Love In You
Featured Album
Four Tet at his most shamelessly gorgeous
During the five years between Four Tet albums, Kieran Hebden has kept busy. His indie rock listeners are probably aware of his improv work with jazz drummer Steve Reid but just as important — particularly to There Is Love in You — is that Hebden has also been flexing his DJ chops. (Fans should seek out his May 2008 set for Resident Advisor's podcast, an illuminating look at his dance floor tastes, ranging from dubstepper Benga to Chicago house pioneer Ron Hardy to the rattling acid techno of Matthew Herbert's Audion alias.) In the middle of 2009, he released a 12-inch collaboration with Burial, "Wolf Cub"/"Moth," that cross-hatched both men's unique styles almost evenly.
There Is Love in You isn't a dance album, per se, though most of it is built on straightforward, if subdued, house rhythms, from the lovely glitches that swirl through "Sing" to the ringing, gorgeous, cut-up female vocal of "Angel Echoes," whose sample-slaw technique recalls New Jersey garage king Todd Edwards. But that opening number's feet-planted awe echoes throughout the rest of the album. The strikingly titled "This Unfolds" bubbles with bell-tones and acoustic fingerpicking over lazy snares reminiscent of Reid laying back, before the pulse quickens into something clubbier and shaken percussion ripples in. There Is Love in You is Four Tet at his most shamelessly gorgeous, and as Joy Orbison and Roska's reworks of "Love Cry" have already shown, it should prove catnip to Hebden's fellow DJs as well.
