Four Tet Looks For A Human Voice

It takes only about 30 seconds into the new Four Tet album, There Is Love In You, before you realize Kieran Hebden is trying to shake things up.

Fading in amidst a slow, hypnotic beat comes something rarely heard on previous Four Tet records: a human voice.

"Using vocals is pretty unusual for me," Hebden admits. "I haven't really used vocal sounds much before. The first track I did for the record was 'Love Cry' and I had the sounds I was looking for and it had almost everything going for it that I wanted, but it just needed to go somewhere.

"So I wanted to do the most unusual thing for me — something that would be unexpected. And the most obvious thing that no one would expect from me would be to use some vocals. And that kind of opened up the floodgates for the record — for a lot of the remaining tracks I thought about what I could do with vocals."

While still working within the parameters of computer-based electronic music, Hebden was fully aware of the need for continuing to push the boundaries of the genre's stereotypes and limitations. The result is a very Four Tet-sounding album with new characteristics that manage to set it apart from Hebden's back catalogue.

"With the last album, Everything Ecstatic, I was concerned with full-on energy in music and the ecstasy of pushing things to their peak," Hebden says.

"The new album, in contrast, is more about the kind of blissful state that music can take us to. I wanted to make a record that was about the idea of bliss through music. The idea of hearing music and experiencing music that takes you to a kind of blissful place. I really wanted that."

Unquestionably, the added vocals on the album have helped Hebden create the mood and feel he was searching for. They're not intrusive and are never the main focus — as in "Love Cry" where the haunting female vocals appear in only the middle-third of the song — but rather they're meant to mesmerize.

"I never really wanted actual words or lyrics for the album," says Hebden, "but I wanted to explore vocal sounds and use them like an instrument. What I've been doing is more influenced by dance music anyway, and with dance music you use vocals in that way to an effect. So I just started experimenting and I like that you can hardly ever make out what the vocals are saying."

Like some of his equally successful contemporaries (Caribou, M83, Junior Boys) Hebden's ability to keep his music sounding fresh ultimately separates him from the rest of the electronica pack. Staying ahead of the game is something always on Hebden's mind and it helps fuel his creativity.

"It's important for me to always move on with every album," he says. "I think with Everything Ecstatic all the music around me was very meaningless and bland. People were making music that's just polite as possible and can be played in the background or in a commercial or something like that. And I wanted to make something that was pumped up and aggressive.

"With this new album, I was more interested in making something with more optimism to it. Especially living in a world fueled so much by greed, I liked the idea of making a record more focused on the concept of bliss, with people enjoying the love more than the greed."

You can see Four Tet here:
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Jan. 22 London, England @ Fabric
Jan. 23 Barcelona, Spain @ Apolo 2
Feb. 5 Berlin, Germany @ WMF Club Transmediale
Feb. 12 London, England @ The Dome
Feb. 17 New York, NY @ Le Poisson Rouge
Feb. 18 Cambridge, MA @ The Middle East Restaurant & Nightclub
Feb. 19 Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
Feb. 20 Austin, TX @ The Mohawk
Feb. 23 Seattle, WA @ Chop Suey
Feb. 24 Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret
Feb. 25 Portland, OR @ Doug Fir
Feb. 26 San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
Feb. 27 Los Angeles, CA @ Echoplex