REVIEW: Four Tet - There Is Love In You

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Written by Rhys Tate

It's been five years since Keiran Hebden's last release under the Four Tet moniker, Everything Ecstatic, but the Dave Eggers of electronic music (fingers in many pies, own stuff comes in two flavours: brilliant or average) has been far from idle during this time. He's the remixer du jour for the discerning indienista and he had an admirable crack at tarting up the impossibly tired strings at the end of the last Bond film, Quantum of Solace.

Perhaps the most significant Four Tet collaboration in this time was with dubstep genius William Bevan, aka Burial - a 12" known as Moth/ Wolf Cub, after the names of the two tracks contained therein. Although this came only months before the release of There Is Love In You, I can't help feeling the coherency of Burial's beats washing over Hebden's glitch instrumentals influenced the direction of his album as much as the testing of the prototracks during his DJ residencies.

This coherency is, however, what will scare longtime fans off and lead them to accuse tracks such as 'Love Cry' as being the sort of stuff the Chemical Brothers shouldn't have been doing ten years ago. For me, however, this is the strength of the album: a simplicity that masks complex structures and a coolness that creates a paradoxically warmer experience for his audience. Tracks such as 'Sing', which sounds like Tujiko Noriko kickboxing her way out of a photocopier factory, are devastatingly immediate; the exciting thing is that I suspect the not-so-immediate tracks (and there is not a bad one among the eight offered) will release gradual, seeping sonic rewards over the coming months.

3.5/5 stars

Standout tracks: Angel Echoes, Sing, This Unfolds

here Is Love Love In You is out now through Domino Records