Four Tet’s career has never been conventional. English musician Kieran Hebden, once a member of the rock group Fringe, assumed the Four Tet moniker in 1998 as he worked on solo material. Over the years, Hebden has established Four Tet as an electronica mastermind, putting out albums and remixes that have eschewed conventional song structure. Though it has been years since the last Four Tet LP, the EP Ringer is worth the wait.
Many albums hover around half an hour these days, but Four Tet has been known to test his audience’s attention span. “Thirtysixtwentyfive,” Hebden’s debut single as Four Tet, stretched on as long as the name suggests. While Ringer is a paltry 31 ½ minutes but comparison, each of the four tracks offers its own dark, brooding and curious atmosphere.
“Ringer” is a churning mixture of melody and blips, convention and innovation. Hebden tosses more instrumentation in as the song goes along only to draw them out again, creating a ten-minute sonic tide. “Ribbons” ripples like the soundtrack of some suspense film. By contrast, “Swimmer” has an ebbing start and then churns on as soothingly and steadily as its name suggests. The final track on the EP, “Wing Body Wing,” has a surging, stomping beat as though sending the audience on a march to the end, the keyboards overtop the drum machine picking up where “Swimmer” left off.
This atmospheric EP is a perfect soundtrack for calm introspection, late night discussion or just trying to work without the unnecessary diversion of music with vocals. Ringer is a mere glimpse into Four Tet’s bag of material, but if these are the only four songs he can share at the moment, then his fans will be quite lucky when he pieces together his next LP.
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Track Names
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Ringer
Ribbons
Swimmer
Wing Body Wing
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Artist: Album
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Four Tet: Four Tet-Ep
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Genre
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Electronica/Dance
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More Information
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http://www.fourtet.net
