Sitting in my room with a handy day off work for reasons I can't be bothered to go into, I feel I've been given the perfect opportunity to write about an album I've been enjoying for some time now. I'm watching the wind rage outside and am sadly transported to the Island of the Phillipines where thousands of corpses lie awash the streets and many more thousands face the reality of a short-term future at the very least without a home. Aid is now arriving in droves, especially it has to be said from the US who are said to be providing support on an 'unprecedented scale'. But with a current confirmed death toll of 2300 and the grave admittance from the UN that more than 11 million people will be affected by this typhoon, the affects aren't going to be felt for weeks; they will be felt for years. Horrifically depressing stuff to think about but it's definitely at times like this where our lives can be placed into perspective by events in the world thousands of miles away. The Phillipines has always been a country in jeopardy, battling with democracy ever since World War Two as varying dictators have attempted to take hold since its independence and it has equally experienced natural disasters, not to the scale of this one but fearful nonetheless. Now the mass rebuilding operation can slowly begin, and with as much help from the west as humanly possible I hope it can be as successful as an operation of this size could possibly be.
This week I've been listening pretty much non-stop to Four Tet's new LP Beautiful Rewind. It had been only a while since we'd heard a peep out of Kieran Hebden a la Four Tet but enough of a while to lead to the slight beginnings of a genuine frustration at the lack of a current release from one of Britain's most influential dance producers of the recent decade. 2012's Pink was mostly a collection of previously released 12-inches with a couple unreleased but listened as a whole it was a masterpiece and one which I enjoyed for some while, far more experimental than some of his previous work but with a beautifully metronomic feel to it which lend itself very well to the type of background music you could have playing while say revising for an exam or having a kip. Beautiful Rewind was released back in mid-October (I'm a tad late on the uptake but wanted to get a good listen in first) with virtually no hype attached to it. It was simply announced by one tweet stating there would be 'no pre-order, no youtube trailers, no itunes stream, no spotify, no amazon deal, no charts, no bit coin deal, no last minute rick rubin'. This hasn't in any way prevented from either selling badly or gaining highly favourable reviews.
The album itself moves away from Pink's sleepy metronome and draws in part upon Hebden's DJ work (a residency at East London's Plastic People) mainly in the UK garage and grime scenes but with some traditional floaty two-step infused for good measure. This is noticeable more than anything on the most publicised of the tracks, 'Parallel Jalebi'. This tune opens with and is suffused throughout by a speedy garage beat which lends it pace but it is overtoned with a certain female vocal 'airy-fairyness', breathing life into it and making it a personal highlight. As with the majority of tracks off of Rewind, we are greeted with an approximate 30-second mini-pause in the middle, before Hebden throws a new surprise at us or simply continues where he has left off. Opener 'Gong' follows a similar formula but is far more influenced by the Middle-Eastern and African beats which Four Tet so loves and has been so noticeable on his previous works. This tune is far sharper, the vocals are all-male and are more reflective of an MC rather than a singer. They are used to good effect on many of the other tracks and help to back up my main point about the album which is Hebden's keen ambition to demonstrate to his listener just how much he is enjoying his DJ-ing at the moment. 'Kool FM', a shout-out to one of his most-loved London radio stations, begins in a similar vein to 'Parallel Jalebi' but is turned on its head in the traditional mid-pause by a yelp of 'Hey-hey-hey' which appears totally disconnected to the track and transports us to the underground. It is fascinating to listen to and is something we haven't heard much of from the Tet before.
'Buchla' follows and shares a similarity with 'Kool FM' in the sharpness of its over-dubbed MC track, while being slightly too grimy for my tastes it certainly isn't bad and with the right atmosphere would be an absolute banger. Nearing the end of the LP, Hebden veers off course into a totally different direction and treats us to album closers 'Unicorn' and 'Your Body Feels'. 'Unicorn''s intro sounds strangely like the soundtrack of an old Nintendo adventure game but is quickly hurried along with more foreign drumming and a sweet under-layered bass line, it is another undoubted highlight of mine. 'Your Body Feels' closes the LP in a style which Hebden has imbued into his more recent work, this time he involves trumpets and saxophones along with a constant eerie clap and more of the tried and tested repetitive female vocal outlay which works a treat.
Overall this is an album of heavy multi-layering - spanning different genres, influences, sounds and possibly most importantly professions (think Hebden as performing DJ compared with Hebden as bedroom sound producer). It is one of the year's most intuitive releases and one which should be heard by all, more surely to come from Four Tet in the not-too-distant future. Here he is in one of those roles:
I hope everyone enjoyed and apologies for the wrist-cuttingly painful thought of the day placed serenely at the top of this page, don't know what I was thinking! Also check out the beautiful Disney-esque video for 'Parallel Jalebi' below, I only discovered it today and it's a goodun (got a live version of 'Kool FM' as well, think it showcases it in its best light even if the camera is a tad on the shaky side and the people in the background won't shut the fuck up).
Enjoy the day people,
Max
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