Positive Education
Four Tet doesn’t think like most producers — luckily for us.
And the experimental jazz and electronic genius, who digs
Shakira as much as he does Aphex Twin and Todd
Edwards, has just made his first full-on dance record.
DJmag meets him…
Words: BEN ARNOLD
t’s no great surprise that when Kieran Hebden comes
I
into the cafe to meet DJmag, he’s clutching a thick
wedge of vinyl in a bag from eminent London music
emporium Sounds Of The Universe. Among the haul
there’s Honest Jon’s latest double-vinyl collection of
Afro-Latin rhythms and the grammatical nightmare that is
‘BRKLN CLLN’, the new 12” from dubstep wunderkind Joy
Orbison.
As Four Tet, Hebden’s musical points of reference are
intimidatingly sprawling — free jazz, hip-hop, leftfield
electronica, krautrock, weird European library music,
musique concrete, house, techno, grime, UK garage,
two-step, dubstep. It’s probably the only way his music
could sound the way it does. But he’s always had a problem
with pigeonholes. Long saddled with the nebulous and
arguably misleading label of ‘folktronica’, he’s poised to
smash such genre fascism with a wrecking ball.
“People ask me about the music industry and how it’s
supposed to be dying,” he says, leafing carefully through his
purchases. “I’m keeping it alive! I’m in the shops every
week. In 90% of music interviews, people get asked what
they think about downloading. I’m sure loads of people say
they’re really worried about people downloading their stuff,
but they’ve probably not bought a record in the past three
years or something. If people are so worried about it, they
should maybe go out and buy a record.”
So you’re either part of the solution or part of the problem.
It’s a good point. Hebden is full of them, it turns out. He’s
definitely bright anyway. He looks like a bit of an egghead,
in the politest way possible of course, with a shock of curly
hair and an intense, deep-set gaze. You only have to listen to
Four Tet compositions to know that this is most likely the
case. His music is layered and complex but without ever
feeling impenetrable. It’s a tightrope walk, but one that he
has mastered, from his debut ‘Dialogue’, on Trevor Jackson’s
Output Recordings (Jackson also signed Hebden’s first band
Fridge when he was still a teenager), to the critically lauded
‘Pause’ and ‘Rounds’, both released on Domino, his label
home since 2001.
His last album, 2005’s ‘Everything Ecstatic’, was a reaction
to the ineffectual; to music without meaning.
“It was kind of full throttle. I was finding much music to be
very bland. I was missing that thing of people reaching true
intensity, like what happens in a really passionate free jazz
record or a gospel record, people performing because they
think they’re communicating with god through their music,
instead of people writing songs thinking, ‘This is pretty, I
don’t know what it means, maybe it’ll get on an advert’.
“That seemed to be more the mentality of what had
happened. People used to use music as the most powerful
force.”
www.djmag.com
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DJ481.fourtet_feature.indd 43 2/12/09 16:26:23
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