“It’s best just to say that I make and play electronic music” opens Kieran Hebden. “I use computers to make human music; music that connects to people and provokes real experiences and emotions. That’s it in a nutshell.”
It’s probably as close to a succinct summary of Hebden’s musical profile as one’s likely to get being that, under alter-ego Four Tet, he has dabbled with most forms of underground and even overground music. And not just dabbled, but boldly live and breathed….
Hebden is about to release a 14th album which, once again, vividly conveys the sheer breadth and depth of his vision. Fabriclive 59, compiled and mixed by Four Tet, is a heady, helter-skelter ride through everything from UK funky (Apple’s Mr Bean) to hypnotic tech (Ricardo Villalobos’ Sieso) via long-lost 90s 2-step (Crazy Bald Head’s First Born), grimy grime (Youngstar’s Pulse X), dub (Floating Point’s Sais) and pounding bass (Burial’s Street Halo). There’s even room for seventies Moog courtesy of early Moog pioneer David Borden and for Four Tet’s own new productions, Pyramid and Locked.
Of course, such wild and creative variety isn’t without narrative and cohesion. “The main idea for the mix came from when I met the Fabric guys for the first time” Hebden explains. “They talked about the heritage of their venue and about how they wouldn’t launch a Fabric club or night anywhere else. I liked the idea of eschewing the traditional mix format and creating a very specific soundtrack to Fabric’s London location.”
Hence Four Tet’s eclectic, highly engaging track selections all in some way tie back to 77 Charterhouse Street, EC1, interspersed by field recordings direct from the club itself (recorded by audio-engineer friend Sasha Lewis). But it’s not just a Fabric thing. It’s a London thing.
“There’s so much great music in London right now” Hebden enthuses. “I’ve been basing myself in New York this year but have found myself more fixated on London than ever before… hankering after club nights in Dalston and Rinse [at Fabric] but, crucially, able to step back and see the bigger picture… appreciate what London is currently about. It has worked well in terms of making the Fabric album.”
An album that has seen our man carrying out impressive levels of research – setting up meetings with specialist record dealers, swapping streams of emails with friends and contacts, Tweeting requests into the wee small hours and chasing down obscure, hopeless leads, all to acquire the rare gems and classic curios that might help set him and his work apart. It’s a bookish process his been feeding into his DJ sets around the world for many years now.
Does he feel like he’s still standing out and making a different after 13 years in the music game? “I don’t worry about it too much. I feel in a very happy place right now, happy with my studio and the range of my output, which has a consistent, appreciative audience” he offers. “I don’t worry myself about what the wider industry thinks of my stuff; as long as I feel there’s a point to it and it has freshness then I’m content.”
If anything Hebden has withdrawn himself deeper into the studio in recent months. The digital ease with which music now zooms around the world has forced him to become more guarded about new material and clinical about its release: “It’s a weird situation. The volume of music being put out today is amazing and yet I find myself reigning back from the world when working on new ideas. It’s too easy for music to leak these days before it is ready, and before anyone, including the media, has had a chance to properly digest and understand it. It’s all about 24-7 news and people scrambling for another exclusive story.
“I’ve become really tactical with releases. In the last year I’ve gone as far as putting records out without letting the distributor know; they’ve just turned up at the manufacturing plant for production. I need this level of secrecy sometimes; when my records have leaked before, there have been literally hundreds of Tweets from people in the first few minutes. It’s crazy and undermines all the hard work in so many ways.”
Understandably, perhaps, it’s difficult to extract any real detail about Hebden’s next set of far-flung plans. But that, to be fair, is as much to do with canny, poker-face marketing as it is with just wanting to chill out. Ever since last January’s well-received Four Tet album There Is Love In You, Hebden has succumbed to a mammoth stretch of promotional activity and touring; not to mention collaborative work with Burial and Radiohead’s Thom York (the split 12” Ego/Mirror).
“I’ve had everything mapped out for about 18 months now and I need a break from that. Time to create and DJ a little more freely and see where things take me” he confesses. “There were some new Four Tet tunes on the Fabric album, but there’s nothing specific beyond that.”
Perhaps Hebden is looking to surprise himself, when he least expects it? “That’s the absolute key, for me” he says, “to keep on my toes and be able to constantly re-assess my values as a music-maker. When I first worked with Steve Reid [the improvisational jazz drummer] a few years back [Hebden went on to release four albums with Reid, between 2006 and 2008] I knew immediately that my outlook on things was going to change radically – musically, and from a personal point of view. That sort of step-change is important; it’s important to keep testing yourself and not settle for complacency. I’m at my best when I feel scared; when I think a new record has a 50% chance of success, and 50% chance of failure.”
Hebden’s early days in post-rock band Fridge must feel like a veritable age ago. Since those changeable, experimental mid-90s days, the Putney-born artist has truly embraced his solo craft and matured through boundary-breaking albums such as Dialogue, Pause, Ringer and There Is Love… The interesting collaborations continue to come; so too the remixes – Hebden has previously turned his hand to Beth Orton, Radiohead, Matthew Dear and even Black Sabbath….
“I am” he re-summarises “an electronic musician, loving my craft and the tools and people I work with. I know parts of the music industry are apprehensive about some of the changes technology is bringing but there are so many good changes in terms of the studio. It’s amazing when I think about the first time I tried making a tune on my laptop 10 years ago and what a fumbling nightmare it was, compared to how easy it is to manipulate software and laptops right now. It’s really paving the way for some great music.”
Hebden does, however, have his doubts about technology in live performance: “I guess it’s even more amazing that a lot of venues and festivals still haven’t got the sound right yet, even with all this technology at their disposal. Whenever I play out there are often obstacles to me giving a perfect set because of the poor speakers or kit I’m forced to use. If you know the sound is going to be poor you end up compensating by playing big, big tunes to keep the audience onside. That’s OK to a point but when you have a decent soundsystem somewhere like Plastic People [the East London club] there is so much more you can offer in your performance. I just hope things get better in this respect.”
Hebden, quite clearly, is continuing to set agendas…
Words: Ben Lovett
Fabriclive 59 – mixed by Four Tet – is out September 19 on Fabric Records.
