Half An Hour Of Four Tet

Some Kieran Hebeden/ Four Tet for this week's Sunday half hour. There's an embarrassment of riches in his back catalogue- the difficult part was narrowing it down to just six or seven tracks. Kieran takes the energy and feel of rave and combines it with ambient sounds, skippy laptop drums and Indian instruments to make something which is very much his. 

The mix starts with Teenage Birdsong, one of my favourite Four Tet tracks, taken from his Sixteen Oceans album, a record which reminds me of the first days and weeks of the first lockdown in March and April 2020 like no other. Lahaina Noon is from the Ana Painting EP which came out in 2019, a collaboration with the painter Anna Liber Lewis where he made music and she painted in response to each other. Two Thousand And Seventeen is from 2017's New Energy album. Jamie Xx's remix of Lions came out as part of the Atoms For Peace project in 2014 and Raga To Midi W was part of a collection of unreleased tracks and edits he dropped onto his Soundcloud page in 2020. There's one of his unpronounceable Wingdings tracks on there and it finishes with his epic eight minute remix of Daniel Avery's New Eternity. 

Half An Hour Of Four Tet

• Teenage Birdsong
• Lahaina Noon
• Two Thousand And Seventeen
• Lion (Jamie Xx Remix)
• Raga To Midi W
• ʅ͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡(ƟӨ)ʃ͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡ ꐑ(ཀ ඊູ ఠీੂ೧ູ࿃ूੂ✧✧✧✧✧✧ළඕั࿃ूੂ࿃ूੂ,
• Quick Eternity (Four Tet Remix)

Red Circle Earth Red Ring Blue Circle...

I'm not completely sure what's going on here but I came across it on Thursday night and have found it to be highly addictive and a very effective way of switching off and letting your mind drift. It started streaming on Youtube at the end of October and has been streaming ever since. It's by Four Tet and the spinning, never-ending animation is by his friend Anna Liber Lewis (there was a  Four Tet 12" of three songs done for an exhibition with Anna last year). I've no idea how long the loop goes on before it repeats itself or if there's some randomising element to it so it never plays quite the same thing twice or if in fact it's just an extremely long recording but there are several recognisable Four Tet motifs on there- whirring sounds, musical boxes, laptop beats, a vocal sample that may be Ellie Goulding- and it circles round and round endlessly. The way the melodies dance about over the rhythms with such a lightness of touch is so entrancing and hypnotic that I find it difficult to switch it off. 

The only thing in the way of information apart from Four Tet and Anna Liber Lewis' names (and a link to Anna's online t-shirt shop) is this line of emojis. Make of that what you will. 

🔴🌏⭕🔵🌕📀🌍⚫💿🌎🐦🐧🐤🌎💿⚫🌍📀🌕🔵⭕🌏🔴