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Product Description
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Every Four Tet album is inscrutably, sometimes indescribably lovely, and Rounds is no exception. On first listen, it sounds like a near twin of 2001's Pause--a cerebral, organic-sounding journey through vistas of gentle European folk music, Balinese percussion and next-wave hip-hop rhythms. But even Four Tet on autopilot is pretty essential stuff: the opening "Hands" layers shards of stroked acoustic chords and chrome-smooth electronic swishes into a glimmering fog of sound, before tethering it down with crashing drumkit percussion; the bare "Unspoken" sounds like DJ Shadow collaborating with some obscure minimalist composer. In this meditative work, Hebden does so much to dispel the notion that electronic music has to be cold and clinical. Long may he contradict. --Louis Pattison
Customer Reviews
On the first couple if listens it sounds like a bit of mess. You hear a collage of skittering, cut-up beats, electronic effects and samples of `real' instruments and other found sounds all thrown together with seemingly no overall design.
Listen on and persevere, though, and the picture changes. Threads of melody and structure appear on each and every track and the album turns into a multi-layered treasure trove of sound. `She Moves She' features a frisky beat, gently plucked strings and a chiming percussion melody. `My Angel Rocks Back and Forth' is anchored by a heartbreakingly gorgeous harp string motif, so simple in its execution but so effective.
The quality does not drop throughout. `As Serious As Your Life' has plucked guitars and clapping frisky beats whilst the superb closing track, `Slow Jam' has an aching melody and the best use of a squeaky toy I have ever heard in popular music.
The music is so rich and dense that you genuinely do hear something new on every listed. I suppose `Rounds' fits squarely into the Folktronica genre and this style of music will obviously not be to everyone's taste (it would be a dull world if we all liked the same thing), but it is a shame that those reviewers who have been so negative about this CD cannot at least recognise the extraordinarily fecund creative process on display here.
I have loved music for about 18 years and this is one of my favourite CDs of all time. An absolute beauty if you give it a chance.... Read more ›
The album is a feast of unlikely juxtaposition, such as the melodic harp and ghostly, scratchy echo of industrial metronome, overlaid with backwards samples of My Angel Rocks Back & Forth. Elsewhere there are sparse and soothing jazzy pieces, gentle rolling percussion, jangley melotron and hints of the Ipcress File.
Hebden says "This record has a 2am lonely feeling, because that was largely when it was made, on my own, in my little flat" - and that is just how it feels. It's an inspired and original collection of delicately chilled and often haunting, melancholic pieces. An album of rare intensity that feels like an honoured insight into the personal moods of Kieran Hebden.
Picking up the template laid down in 2001's Pause, Hebden hammers it into a different shape seemingly at every turn: the 'Neptunes on a banjo' stylings of single She Moves She give way to the life-support machine beats and frozen harps of My Angel Rocks Back and Forth, whilst album centrepiece Unspoken builds and builds into a mini-epic. In all these tunes and across the whole disc, melodies and musical motifs are scurrying around and popping up in unexpected places, circling and blossoming then being overlaid. In places this leads to a dizzying intensity of sound, and whilst Rounds may not have quite the stylistic variety of Pause (nothing as unexpected as No More Mosquitoes, for instance), it pays dividends in terms of consistency. And whilst this could soundtrack the sun rising over rolling hills, it'll also brighten up far more prosaic activities like going to work, or a long train journey, rewarding the listener with music that puts a sparkle into whatever you care to shine it against.
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