Four Tet
Three
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Kieran Hebden has been releasing music as Four Tet for a quarter of a century. He’s become an adaptable artist, going from playing a sold-out Madison Square Garden show with best buds Skrillex and Fred again.. to performing for a group of teenagers for his daughter’s birthday. Following what seemed like some of the funnest and funniest live sets in recent history at MSG and Coachella, we’re now looking at earnest Taylor Swift reworks and frequent slippages into “Country Riddim”—in other words, Four Tet settling right back down.
Three, his first album in four years, magnifies that dexterity as it ranges from rave-ready recordings blasted with sheet-metal distortion (“Daydream Repeat”) to ambient ballads (“So Blue”), ebbing and flowing from engaging to reflective. There are moments on the record like “Gliding Through Everything” where pearlesque glitches sound like roaming stardust, creating a sense of bewilderment as drones, echoed guitars, and holographic coos guide us further into the dark over the course of the track’s four minutes. When it comes to a somewhat abrupt end, Hebden reels us back into rubbery plucks and a reclined percussive pulse on “Storm Crystals.”
“Daydream Repeat” is the peak of the album’s transportive, bustling beauty. Metallic hi-hats merge with throbbing bass and caffeinated rhythmic shuffles. Also, harps. Glorious harps! It feels like a bacchanalian butterfly dance, both rowdy and freeing. Compare the high-octane beginning of this track with the shoegaze guitars and pensive mellow of “Skater” and you might wonder why the hell these two tracks are part of the same project. But it’s the way in which these recordings (mostly) roll into each other naturally like shifting tides that makes them a familiar consistency within Hedben’s discography. That subtle, purposeful curation is one of his greatest skills that’s spanned his career to date.
After a year of joyful chaos—surprise confetti cannons and subbing in for Frank Ocean at Coachella—Three reminds us that Hebden is always locked in and ready to deliver a technicolored quilt of sound.
