- No one does house like Four Tet.
- A few years from now, it's not ridiculous to think there could be a module of a music business degree on Four Tet. Kieran Hebden navigates this whole thing in a way that feels natural, fluid and completely captivating. Take a look over his 2019 so far. His last release, "Teenage Birdsong," was a bright, slow-burning electronica track that launched his curation of a Spotify playlist and led to his first music video in 14 years (it's a must-see). Before that, he signed "Only Human," the big one with the Nelly Furtado vocal, to Ministry Of Sound. On the one hand, there were his three pieces for the painter Anna Liber Lewis's show at the Elephant West gallery in London; on the other, there's his upcoming reunion with Skrillex at The Warehouse Project. We've reached a place where even the release of a single, three-minute club track such as "Dreamer" feels like an event.
Of course, we wouldn't be talking about any of this stuff if his music weren't frequently so good, which "Dreamer" is. There's a comment on the track's Bandcamp page that pretty much nails it: "In this case, judge a track by its cover. Light, airy, colorful, and everything with bells on." There is, to be sure, nothing we haven't heard from Hebden before. The drums are chunky, detailed and satisfyingly swung. The melodies—which somehow sound both acoustic and electronic—are dazzling. "Dreamer" is more a groover than a roof-raiser, but its simple breakdown hits the spot. The key though (much like the way Hebden markets himself) is that no one else does it like this.