When confronted with things that are even the least bit nuanced or hard to describe, rock critics just love to respond with a nice piece of lazy jargon. And “folktronica,” the term that has been conjured in the genre factory to describe the music of English producer Kieren Hebden’s project, Four Tet, is exactly that. Four Tet earned this descriptor on the merits of the records Dialogue, Pause and 2003’s much-lauded Rounds, all melodic, low-key records that blended acoustic instrumentation, processed sounds and sampled percussion. Everyone knows that we’re not supposed to take such things seriously, and Lord knows if I were a better man I’d just let it go. But I’m not going to, because I think it points to something interesting that goes beyond the cutesy reductionism on the surface. In the last decade we saw electronic music push its way into almost every pop genre, and with that came the hope and expectation that it would transcend its dual reputation as chilly art experiment and thoughtless club music. Moreover, I think there’s a recognition that, because electronic music is uniquely capable of mirroring the digitized, synthetic world that we live in, it has the possibility to respond to and interpret our world in authentic and meaningful ways. Much like the earliest electronic music, traditional folk had an outsider relationship to consumerism and popular song structure; it occupied a space prior to the hegemonies of mass culture. And because traditional music has always been the music that interpreted communities and bound them together, that strengthened social relationships while interpreting the world, perhaps the folk sensibility is just what electronic music needs to remedy its sense of elite isolation. I’ve previously found Four Tet’s music a bit too timid and “chill,” as the kids say, but it is clear that with his latest record, Everything Ecstatic, Hebden has his sights set on something just that ambitious. He is trying to expand his sound beyond the restrained beats and melodies of Rounds and Pause, attempting to create something more dynamic and universal, while still maintaining a pleasing, accessible mood. It is in this space between experimentation and convention, between remaining within a genre and re-imagining that genre’s vocabulary and purpose, that Everything Ecstatic uncomfortably resides.
There is certainly no denying Hebden’s talent as a producer and musician. He is extremely sensitive to the various tones and textures of his sound sources, and he is adept at arranging those sounds to give a song rhythmic and dynamic structure. Everything Ecstatic is dense, loud and often jarring. Hebden builds sounds upon one another, past the point of saturation, and then suddenly rips those layers away to make way for an entirely new set of sounds, only to slowly reintroduce fragments of the earlier patterns. The album opener, “A Joy”, is anchored by a driving, distorted bassline upon which various, unkempt percussion patterns build and clatter, threatening to skitter outside the boundaries of the beat, finally consuming the song in layers of snarling noise. The next track, “A Smile Around the Face” finds Hebden at his trademark mixing of acoustic, analog and digital sounds. And those sounds are remarkably rich and textured. The digital drum hits, the wobbly synthesizer melodies, the waves of gamelan samples swirl around each other, each maintaining its own rhythmic and melodic value within the framework of the central drum pattern. A third song, “Clouding”, clocks in at only 1:39 but is the most striking thing on Everything Ecstatic and reveals Four Tet’s full potential. It is one of the only tracks on the record without a conventional breakbeat, and it features distorted synth lines, long digital tones, and acoustic pipes and flutes swirling over a delicate clatter of improvised, arrhythmic bells and hand cymbals. It is here, along with a handful of other moments on the record, that Hebden touches on the strange majesty, the lingering sense of instability and unrest that makes so much traditional folk music so striking.
“Clouding” is a gorgeous song, a moment of real spontaneity, but much of Everything Ecstatic feels constrained and unconfident. Hebden makes many of the same mistakes here as he did on his earlier albums. Instead of allowing those dense layers of samples and synthetic sounds room to breathe and interact, shaping the song’s rhythmic structure, Hebden tends to impose shopworn, mid tempo hip-hop and breakbeat patterns. Too often, too, he hinges songs on repetitive Boards of Canada flavored synth melodies or conventionally melodic xylophone lines, which sound fine, but aren’t particularly dynamic or original. These elements tend to undermine Hebden’s bolder ideas, and framed in this way, the music slips back into the realm of the familiar, where worn out words like “electronica” and “trip-hop” sadly apply. Too much of the material on this record feels rehashed; while Hebden is an exceptionally gifted craftsman, and Everything Ecstatic a significant step forward, he has yet to fully carve out his own aesthetic.
But he’s almost there. And these are only critiques I would make of a musician this talented and ambitious. With his formidable gifts, he has the opportunity to make something better than just a good downtempo dance record. These days, we desperately do need something like a folk music, something that responds honestly to the world, that echoes the textures and patterns of our environment. We need audacious, overwhelming music that teaches us to listen, and when such things are possible, restraint and respect for genre conventions are hardly a virtue. Because we do not need more music that is easily consumed, we need music that belongs to us. |