Four Tet released a new song/ single last week, four minutes of typically Four Tet sounds and rhythms titled Loved. On first listen it sounds like 'another Four Tet track' but with each play reveals more of itself, a track that goes from surface to depth. A echo- laden, shuffly drum break, washes of synth and some very lovely, reverbed piano. There's some Aphex Twin in the piano, some Brian Eno in the feel, some huge crashing sounds at one minute fifty and the ghost of a voice drops in. It builds, falls apart, the piano returns, all the while the drums shuffling on and on. The drawn out end section, piano and echo repeating for thirty seconds, is beautiful too. It sound sold and very new, like it's been around forever and also one of the first jolts of 2024. There's an album to follow later on this year.
Four Tet has become one of my most played artists in the last few years, the 2017 album New Energy and 2015's Morning/Evening 12" being the starting points I think (in that order) with the 2019 singles Teenage Birdsong and Anna Painting both taking up lots of listening space. Last year he was fairly quiet in terms of releases (but not in terms of touring with an arena tour in the US alongside Fred Again and Skrillex and festival headlining slots). In 2022 he put out Mango Feedback, a dizzying piece of music, skippity drums and bouncing bass and stringed instrument/ synths that constantly delivered little surprises. In April 2023 he released Three Drums which quietly and insistently crept into my consciousness and embedded itself there, another Four Tet track that took on new depths the more you gave into it.
Back in March 2020 Four Tet released his album Sixteen Oceans, a sixteen track, hour long record that pulled everything he's brilliant at into one place, downtempo drums, chirruping synth melodies, echoes of techno and folk, ear pricking samples, the voice of Ellie Goulding, some of the Indian influences of his childhood and parents and dawn chorus ambient tracks. If you bought it on vinyl, side four was sixteen short locked groove tracks, perfect for playing around with and layering other things over the top of- if you have the equipment and skills.
The main thing about Sixteen Oceans for me though was its coinciding with the first lockdown. The album was released on 13th March 2020. We went into lockdown on the 17th March. The album arrived with me at some point that week, a week that was increasingly stressful and difficult. The last two weeks of March were the strangest time, as well adjusted to a very different life, not travelling to work, one way routes round supermarkets, an hour's exercise a day, confinement to reduce infection and protect the vulnerable (and we had a vulnerable person to protect in our house- Isaac's lack of immune system classing him in that group. Recently we found all the letters from the government advising him and others like him to stay at home and shield). The weather was dry and cool, dusk falling early until the clocks went back at the end of the month. Sixteen Oceans brings all these things back to me vividly, the sights and sounds and feel of those first few weeks of lockdown (Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini's Illusion Of Time, released 27th March 2020 does exactly the same). Funny how music can do that. I could pick any of the sixteen tracks but this one, Insect On Piha Beach, will do the job perfectly.
3 comments:
I got Sixteen Oceans early in lockdown, a wonderful album. My main memory will always be my eldest daughter (15 at the time) walking into the backroom whilst Teenage Birdsong was playing. and said "what is this Goth music your listening to, with the sort of disdain a teenager can manage. It still makes me & Mr's Sniper laugh. Three Drums was my most played track of last year, according to my music player on my phone alone it's been played 97 times.
Ha ha, great stuff Jake. Wouldn't necessarily see Teenage Birdsong as goth music but teenagers always know best.
'Loved' is lovely!
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