An electronic music project from the UK which is organized by musician
Kieran Hebden, Four Tet has drawn from diverse influences ranging from techno to folk, to come up with an experimental sound that is unlike any other. Kieran Hebden began releasing material as Four Tet in 1998 with the 36 minute, 25 second single Thirtysixtwentyfive on Trevor Jackson's Output Recordings. 1999's Dialogue, again on Output, was Four Tet's first full-length album release and fused hip hop drum lines with jarring jazz samples. In 2001, Four Tet's second album Pause was released on
Domino Continued...
Records and found Hebden using more folk and electronic samples, which was quickly dubbed "folktronica" by the media and press in an attempt to label the innovative style. Rounds was released in May 2003. It was Hebden's most ambitious album to date incorporating diverse samples such as the mandolin on "
Spirit Fingers" and a rubber duck on the closing track "Slow Jam.”
Hebden’s band, Fridge, was obtaining their own traction during much of the recording history of Four Tet, but Hebden retained Four Tet as a sideline. The No More Mosquitoes EP and the "My Angel Rocks Back and Forth" single preceded the 2005 release of Everything Ecstatic. In 2006, Hebden put together two compilations of some of his favorite tracks, LateNightTales and DJ-Kicks, as well as Everything Ecstatic Films & Part 2. The two-disc Remixes was also compiled and released that year as were two volumes of his Exchange Session project with jazz drummer Steve
Reid. They would go on to collaborate again in 2007’s Tongues and 2008’s Ringer, with Hebden working under his own name. Said one reviewer: “The Ringer mini album is a 32 minute, four-track excursion into the kind of wide-open spaces you might find if you set out to make techno with an afrobeat/krautrock sensibility… While Kieran's trademark recuttings of jazz breaks may be less in evidence, his feel for harmony and melody is, as always, unmistakable.” Fans were no less thrilled.
