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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Kieran Hebden is, it has to be said, something of a genius. The groundwork for Pause was laid on Dialogue--his debut solo album under the guise of Four Tet--landed in 1999, and immediately went about redrawing the parameters of inventive dance music. A peculiar mix of live-sounding instrumental jazz and technologically super-precise laptop dance trickery, it sounded nothing like Hebden's actual group--his day job is spent toiling in occasionally inspired post-rockers Fridge--and, as it happened, very little like anything else in existence. While not as radical a statement as Dialogue seemed, Pause is a definite update--a second brave step into the great beyond; where Dialogue employed jazz sax and flute in its evocation of a 21st-century jazz meltdown, Pause goes even further, coiling whispers of harp and zither over layer-on-layers of fidgeting, rattling percussion. His inspirations? Well, like his friend and protégé, Canadian tech-wizard Manitoba (whose excellent Start Breaking My Heart is easily the equal of Pause), Hebden collects sounds and melodies from a dizzying array of places--ancient British folk music, the rattle of typewriter keys, the gurgle of running water, even a field recording of a children's playground. Genius? There really is no other word for it. --Louis Pattison
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
A really wonderful album. The jazzy beats are perfectly judged to drive the tracks along without being overpowering. The acoustic guitars are simply lovely, and what makes this album really stick out above a lot of others in the genre is the musical quality. You never feel that anything has been done just to say 'look how clever i am', but has been chosen because it will sound not just right but absolutely perfect without being boringly predictable. That's not to say that it's not technically accomplished, because it is, and some of the samples are ingenious, but that is not the ultimate aim of it. Just buy this.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Vinyl
This years summer electronica album, Pause works in much the same way that Music Has the Right to Children did two years ago; providing blissed out and hypnotic brain-dance for jaded clubbers. But where as Boards managed to make the standard synth-and-samples ambience sound strangely organic, here Four Tet manages to make folk instrumentation (that's right rock fans, real instruments) collude perfectly with hip-hop rhythms and snaking jazz basslines. Like the first album, jazz and eastern influences pervade but it is the acoustic guitars, harps and bongos, the flavours of folk and new-age, that define the sound, and give it the summery feel. Relaxing, inventive and compulsive, this is also the closest 'machine music' will ever get to nature.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Back in 1996, Putney, South London, was the scene of the birth of post-rock experimentalists Fridge, brainchild of Kieran Hebden, Adem Ilham and Sam Jeffers. With a distinctive blend of guitars and electronic, the band established themselves very quickly on the music scene, receiving critical acclaim for their three albums and numerous Eps. However, Kieran Hebden started releasing his own material from 1997, under the Four Tet guise. After a string of 12" and a first album, Dialogue, released in 1999, at the tender age of 21, he is back with his second album, Pause. After touring with Fridge, as Badly Drawn Boy's live support band, remixing people as diverse as Aphex Twin, The Cinematic Orchestra or the µ-ziq/Speedy J Slag Boom Van Loon project, Hebden escaped the British weather for a while. Spotted in Toronto exchanging ideas with Manitoba's Dan Snaith, he quietly put the finishing touch to Pause, before joining his mates to record the forthcoming Fridge album, Happiness, due to be released on Hebden's own Text Records imprint. Obviously drawing experience from his work with Fridge, Hebden offers with Pause a somehow very different side of his inspiration. Guitars are here simple particles in a much bigger picture, only providing a sound base for his genuinely cooling melodies. All along, the album reminds of Manitoba's slick ambiences. However, Pause is more constrained than Start Breaking My Heart. There aren't any excursions into wild sonic soundscapes here, as Hebden remains in more conventional surroundings than his Canadian counterpart. This doesn't mean however that Pause is an album to ignore as he creates some gentle, melodic, atmospheres, with astonishing ease. The guitar-breeze over Glue Of The World, Everything Is Alright or You Could Ruin My Day cools down the burning bites of the sun. If not a revolutionary record, Pause is clever enough to grab the attention of the listener and not let go. Four Tet is more than a side project for Kieran Hebden, as he continues to explore the realms of electronic music.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Warm and human music
Okay, I'm a little late to this particular party. But this album is superb and I have to tell it like it is. Warm, intimate, melodic always, comforting, HUMAN music. Read more
Published on 1 Feb 2007 by Adackbar1972
Flashes of brilliance
Some of this album is fairly conventional, though nice, hip hop-electronica material - the "No More Mosquitoes" track for example. Read more
Published on 15 May 2002
Extraordinary
For a side project, 'Pause' certainly takes some beating. Kieran Hebden here melds programmed beats with flashes of guitar and harp to create a genre almost entirely of his own,... Read more
Published on 9 Feb 2002
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