There was something comforting about Four Tet’s recent eight-hour DJ set for London-based Rinse FM to celebrate the release of his latest record, Beautiful Rewind. Four Tet, real name Kieran Hebden, provided a sonic pillow, a sprawling set of dub, disco, jungle, house, garage, jazz; showing how it all connects to the mutant form of dance music he makes. Beautiful Rewind is the latest manifestation of his ever-changing musical identity, another step towards the dance-floor.
Four Tet’s transition to the club in the past few years has been a natural one. In an interview with Clash Magazine before the release of There Is Love In You, 2010’s halcyon tinted side-long glance at house and techno, “When I started making this album, I wanted to make music that touched on those moments that make me feel on fire inside, make me feel sublime. I think that ties in the DJing a lot.” The record followed residencies at London’s Plastic People and with James Holden’s Border Community at The End. The years since have seen Four Tet’s total immersion into the world of dance music, fully realizing the skeletal beats he used to bury under warm analog ephemera and old jazz samples. 2012’s Pink was his most straightforward take on House yet, released piece meal as vinyl-only singles before being compiled into an hour-long album, the sum of its parts not the single narrative of his past albums, but the many of a night out.
Beautiful Rewind is a return to the album as a fully enclosed entity, collecting the sprawl of his eight-hour Rinse FM set and compacting it, confidently switching directions and mood. First track, “Gong,” takes off from Four Tet’s past work with schoolmate Burial, a fractured and reassembled take on jungle and grime. It’s some of Four Tet’s darkest work, the broken refrain “She don’t love me” repeated over the tumbling bass. It merely serves as the half to a whole, with next track “Parallel Jalebi” serving as a feathery counter-balance, undecipherable diva vocals over a fluorescent House pulse. “Jalebi” recalls Four Tet’s best moments, the type of tune that’s simple and beautiful, like all of Rounds’ “Hands” or when the vocals enter on There Is Love In You’s “Angel Echoes.” On “Jalebi,” he does something else, cutting the song off early only to bring it back, a rewind, a pre-internet romanticism of a moment so great that it needs to be replayed, immediately. He’ll do it again on “Kool FM,” a nod to the influential London pirate radio station of the same name, bringing the bonkers jungle beat to the point of release over and over to the point where you think it won’t happen, when it finally does, the track is nearly finished. A high quickly faded into nothing.
Four Tet leaves himself outs, steering clear of any sort of fatigue or stagnation. The fuzzy plinks of “Ba Teaches Yoga” is more atmospheric than anything else on the record, something he still does better than anyone, while “Unicorn” might just be his prettiest song yet. It stutters and rises, revealing it’s kaleidoscopic heart as it begins to race forward. Like Boards of Canada’s “Everything You Do Is A Balloon,” it sounds like it could buffer a science program, one about space or the tectonic shift of the planets.
Most of the album’s heart lays on the dance-floor. Four Tet’s always had the best drum sounds this side of Burial, and now he’s using them for propulsion, like on “Aerial” and “Buchla.” Closing track, “Your Body Feels,” is a communion of his past and his present, of the head and the body. Its track title is repeated throughout, a come-up and come-on living on in perpetuity, never brought to completion.
Beautiful Rewind continues Four Tet’s streak of excellent records, complete and forward-looking statements that haven’t aged in a sea of post-tronica albums that have. It also continues an already rich year from contemporaries, Mount Kimbie, Falty DL, Oneohtrix Point Never, the previously mentioned Boards of Canada, who have all released outstanding records that traffic in the same adventurous sonic territory Four Tet does. Chances are he already played them on his marathon broadcast.
Grade: A-
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