Four Tet There Is Love In You

If there is a euphoric state of electronica bliss, then Four Tet’s fifth album, There Is Love in You, has definitely captured it. DJ, producer, and musician Kieran Hebden returns after a 5- year hiatus, with a new album that grooves and warmly exuberates. Pulsating with mid-tempo dance beats and woozy vocal echoes, the album is a noted comeback.

 

Featuring 9 tracks, Hebden experiments and explores how various sounds fit in time, so closely connected yet puzzling in design. Often, the tracks hint at Hebden’s formula for musical equilibrium and please with sweet tones, shifting from his earlier albums.

 

The opening track, Angel Echoes, hits the aural senses with rhythmic whirring and churning, mixed sampling that slowly builds across the 4 minute track. Underneath the female cooing and pointy chimes, the song keeps steady with a throbbing beat.   Sincere and oblique fits in Circling with dizzying layers of sound. The repetitious melodies undulate and intensify with each added technological zap and spiraling, Enya-like vocals.

 

Shifting into a 90’s throwback and ode to Eurodance music, Plastic People belongs in a European nightclub. Inflections of house, trance, and pop infiltrate this track, with shakers and offbeat hand claps. All it is missing is a vocalist, like Melanie Thornton (La Bouche) or Amber, to powerfully carry it into the dance clubs across the world.

 

Reversing is a flower circling backwards before bloom, while everything around it is on the verge of turning in on itself. And it doesn’t lose its end result; the jabs and buzzes of synthesized sound Hebden molds finish in a musical schism. Slightly melancholic and tepid, the album's final track She Just Likes to Fight swirls with perfectly placed melodic nuances and drifting guitar riffs. Hebden develops the title into a contemplative story, securing the pugnacious aura of the song.

 

It’s no surprise, from his success in the electronica realm, from remixing tracks for top rock/indie rock bands across the globe (Radiohead, Black Sabbath, Bloc Party) to becoming a part of Bond history (end song for Quantum of Solace), that Hebden can temporarily vanish and reappear completely equipped with creative material. What I find so satisfying with this album, is how Four Tet envisions the lushness of a song, and sonically creates a buoyant, lighthearted blend – a complete album for the lively and lighthearted.