In case you’re not familiar with the UK’s Four Tet, allow me to bring you up to speed: Don Van Vliet, Instellar Space-era John Coltrane, and that man who dances in the “Days Go By” music video by Dirty Vegas have suddenly morphed into one guy, Keiran Hebden, who records electronic music under the moniker Four Tet.
There Is Love In You is his fifth LP, most of it written and recorded during (and influenced by) Hebden’s DJ residency at London dancehall Plastic People. It’s the closest Hebden has come to making a “club” album—in fact, half the thrill of listening to the record is the anticipation (or fear) that the whole thing is going to explode into some sort of slick Mazda commercial at any moment. The other half is that it never does: just when songs like “Love Cry” and “Sing” work themselves into such a skitter-spatter, triumphant female vocal loop frenzy that it feels as if the only way out is with some tribal-tattooed alpha male screaming “Feel The Bass!” Hebden stirs in something unexpected like a kalimba or the heartbeat of a fetus.
Album closer (and “best song name” winner) “She Just Likes to Fight” has a number of rhythmic flourishes so engaging that I am pretty certain that, in cooperation with a gentle spring rain, it could induce synesthesia. Music this smart has never sounded so sexy.—Nick Mckinlay
VVVVv
