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Twenty-seven-year-old Kieran Hebden, better known as Four Tet, is the musical equivalent of that cool, quiet kid in high school who stole all the prettiest girls from the louder, more obnoxious guys. He's toured with Radiohead and remixed artists ranging from Aphex Twin to Beth Orton, yet his sweet, shy demeanor belies his status as one of the most sought-after beatmakers around. Everything Ecstatic, his fourth album, will be released May 31, and it's nothing less than a sonic brainfuck. From the carnival jazz of the single "Smile Around the Face" to the tribal jive of "Sun Drums and Soil," the album swings from one dreamscape to the next with the joyous ease of a digital-age master in his prime. In our interview, he opened up about globetrotting, the state of electronic music and his affinity for romantic comedies. — Adam Kaufman It seems like you've been on tour forever. Is it tough to be on the road so long? My girlfriend's actually based in New York at the moment, sorting out some immigration stuff, so that's been where I've been spending most of my time. It's been like that for a few years. You get used to it. On paper, it all looks really intense, but I never go away for more than about three weeks at a time. Everything Ecstatic is relentlessly uplifting. Why the cheer? I wanted to make a record that has a positive message about music, the power and magic of it, that sounded like it was celebrating the sound that was on it, rather than going introspective and intimate. I feel like I covered that sort of experience on the last one [Rounds], and I wanted to make a record that was more outgoing. Electronic music has lost a lot of buzz since the days when Moby was called the savior of the music industry. What's the state of things? When I think of electronic music, I think more of something like Aphex Twin, stuff that came more out of techno. There are always big artists who are kind of doing their own thing, being received on their own, but you need a bunch of people going to shows to sustain it as a movement. I think electronic music's been having a hard time because there's been such a rise of rock bands. A few years back, everyone was saying, "Rock music's dead, it's all about dance music." They're all coming back now and saying, "Dance music's dead, it's all about rock bands." And then there's someone like M.I.A., who's doing very well for herself. Yeah, because she's a bit more outgoing, you know? I think a lot of electronic music became very selfish and indulgent. A lot of it became about hiding away in your bedroom and listening to it quietly, on your own. And that's all well and good, but it shouldn't be what it's all about. I think that's why the M.I.A. thing is so exciting. It's a record that's really trying to communicate to people. It's coming forward and saying, "This is what I do, and it's fantastic." Is"lappop" (catchy pop music made solely with computers) a trend that will keep building as technology advances, or is it a fad? I think it's pretty normal. Whatever kind of technology's around at the time will start getting woven into pop music. People will say, "The Postal Service is quite unique," but if you really listen to it, a lot of the sounds you hear, you're gonna hear those sounds on many rock records. If you buy the new Bravery album, bands like New Order have been doing that sort of stuff for ages. I think people calling something "lappop," that's the thing that will come and go. You've said you look for pop music that doesn't rely on nostalgia. You get rock bands that think the Rolling Stones are the greatest rock band that's ever existed, and they'll put them on this pedestal, and they'll try to dress like them, and they'll try to do their record. The thing to do is to take the Rolling Stones and maybe steal one of their riffs and just destroy what they did, because that's what they did. They stole riffs and things from blues records they liked and made something new out of it. And that doesn't mean they didn't love those blues records. It means that they were just trying to take new steps. You've said you consider your music to be jazz, but jazz traditionalists don't think of you that way. I think the problem is, you've got this really conservative attitude that jazz should be made and treated like classical music nowadays, and to treat it like a kind of higher art form. You've got this whole thing revolving around people like Wynton Marsalis, about "preserving jazz heritage" and jazz standards, and I don't really approve of that at all. It lets down what a lot if the groundbreaking ideas and attitudes in jazz were all about. In the late '60s and early '70s, a lot of that music is very tied up with African-American issues, the Hippie movement, Eastern mysticism. But it's a very different world today. Speaking of the wider world, there's a very romantic sense of travel and geography in your music. It's one of the things that's going to happen traveling so much. I'm influenced by that stuff, whether I like it or not. I don't even realize how much it affects what I do. People say that to me all the time, like, "Your music sounds as if you've been traveling the world." I don't realize it when I'm making music, but it makes sense to me afterward. And everywhere you go, you're all by yourself up there, without any projections or even any vocals. It's extremely intimate. Yeah, very much so. I like doing it that way, because I got used to it from doing lots of DJing. To do it in a very pure kind of way like that puts a lot of pressure on me. I'm very aware of the audience. I like the idea of entertaining them and playing to them. But I'm not really interested in having any sort of visuals or graphics. I'm really into the idea of just trying to communicate purely through my music. I'm not really interested in being any kind of rock star. You're a romantic. I'm a real sucker for romance. I'm a huge fan of romantic comedies: that idea of getting the girl and having the triumphant ending. I love those scenes in romantic comedies where it cuts to a pop song, and a couple's running around hand-in-hand. I kind of make albums that way, thinking, "Oh, this would fit nicely over one of those scenes." n°
© 2005 Adam Kaufman and hooksexup.com. |
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, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
