It’s electronic music with tribal and psychedelic sounds. I could call it quirky downtempo, so I guess that’s what we have leftfield for. Interestingly it reminds me of the time when I discovered the Afro-Caribbean scene even if the stylistic expression is different.
Another collection of beautifully sophisticated downtempo electronics from Four Tet. At certain points I tend to think this record loses some of the uniqueness that I attribute to Four Tet, but at the end of the day these songs are still so full that love and soul that I feel pouring out of the headphones while listening to them. And in that sense I distinctly feel that I’m still listening to a Four Tet album.
Love Salad plays all the notes that I’m looking for here, this is what sounds like Four Tet in 2020 for me: long minimal beat prologue, heartfilling melody, shows the past, represents the present. There can be Bibios and Apparats out there playing along similar strings but this guy still takes it home best for me. Also and maybe most importantly the upbeat airiness that I feel so well in this track is what defines his sound right now, and it’s quite a long journey from when As Serious As Your Life was my favorite track in 2003. The triphop heavy thoughts and blue moods are overshadowed (or overlit rather) by a breeze of fresh air and the ease of motion that enables a carefree dance. Even in a track called Something in the Sadness it’s just rolling and moving and jingling and it’s dropping the burden and not carrying it around. I love this Four Tet now.
Electronic ambient with some oriental instrumentation and spoken words, but the most powerful bit and its most unique voice is at the end in the last two tracks, which are totally detached fromt he arc of the album by the way. Actually I’d rather have those two separately as an EP and be happy with it.
Self Doubting Trip is a cinematic-atmospheric soundscape with a tight beat and tense tune, like when the big reveal of an exciting movie is just being unfolded. Then in Dekotur this continues with some chiming sounds and a whole lot of layers building up very slowly. This latter bit actually feels a lot like the beginning of Johnny Jewel’s Vapor, the two could nicely play after one another. (It’s like the end of Terminator and the beginning of the Matrix.)
Techno and house in its rhythms but with a slow tempo and with lots of atmospheric sounds. Beautiful music, too, in a blue and moody sense.
When you put on noise cancelling headphones and listen to this in the middle of a busy city it’s like a movie about a civilization in decay and the meaninglessness of everyday life. The scene when you’re watching them run around in their little useless lives and you already know but they don’t that their fraglie mudball planet is on an all-erasing collision course with a huge asteroid. Could be a soundtrack to Melancholia.
It’s a second Four Tet in a day, but I just did a catch-up on Spotify, and this one also needs to be pinned up here. Title track and Lahaina Noon both make my head wobble.