FOUR TET - There Is Love In You

Kieran Hebden hasn't made any original Four Tet tunes for a little while now, instead filling his time with his excellent experimental collab with percussionist Steve Reid and, as always, throwing down a bunch of remixes here and there. These remixes have been a real key to understanding his M.O.—it's what sets him apart from so many of his electro-peers. Where many remixers see such projects as an opportunity to completely gut and strip a tune, Hebden often turns in a revision that is less about his own ego and more about the track's original intent slightly tweaked.

In short, the man's got an ear for melody and a respect for the structure of a song. There Is Love In You holds true to this, in Four Tet's own unique way. Unlike close friend Dan Snaith, a.k.a. Caribou, he has not made a full switch over to embracing what would be typically termed 'songs' with distinct verses and choruses, but this album still maintains a close relationship with melody via disembodied, cut-and-paste voices and swirling, levitating synth arpeggios. His attention to layered detail is acute without strangling the life out of the music—in fact, quite the opposite is true. The buoyant, evolving groove of "Love Cry" wastes not a second of its nine minutes, twisting itself in and out of fascinating, yet ever danceable, musical knots. Even the most straightforward pieces—the stately "This Unfolds" or the barely-there "Reversing"—have plenty of meaty strata through which to dig.

Four Tet doesn't mine any new territory here, but a voice already as strong as his doesn't need to. This is heartfelt computer music, where the hand of an 'unfeeling' machine is used to communicate some beautifully oblique emotions.