This Love

Four Tet “Angel Echoes”

A lot of minimalism and electronic music can sound sterile, utilitarian, and uninviting, as if recorded music was simply the most logical presentation method for the artist’s concepts. This isn’t the case for Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden, who manages to invest his compositions with a loose, “live” sound despite the distinctly non-live nature of his craft. “Angel Echoes”, the first track on his latest (and best) album There Is Love In You, doesn’t try to convince you that you’re hearing something entirely organic, but there is a subtle tension in it that implies spontaneity. It could just be the specific sound of the percussion sample, some perceptible trace of humanity that offsets the more mechanical aspects of the piece. Either way, Hebden finds some soulful fragment, and builds up from there, always balancing the physical and the cerebral. It sounds like healthy music, if that makes sense.

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