Some performers get started taking part in it secure when the phases get larger. Now not Kieran Hebden—higher referred to as 4 Tet—the heady, tasteful, crate-digging manufacturer who has taken his new arena-sized crowds as a possibility to confound, pride, and troll. At the back of the decks, there’s no transfer that’s taboo, no song that’s off-limits. A decade in the past, that supposed elevating eyebrows by way of going back-to-back within the sales space with Skrillex, Now that he and Sonny Moore have grow to be an Bizarre Throuple with Fred once more.., the BFFs’ B2B2Bs are Hebden’s alternative to additional subvert no matter you could have concept 4 Tet is meant to sound like. At Madison Sq. Lawn, he dropped a mischievous minimal-house edit of Taylor Swift’s “Love Tale” that he’d cobbled in combination for his daughter. At Coachella, he used the intro to “Smells Like Teenager Spirit” because the setup to an absurdist punchline: Hol!’s “Nation Riddim,” a dubstep anthem that includes a cartoonishly garish drop. (Hebden loves that track: On the trio’s marvel Occasions Sq. gig in February 2023, he unleashed the song once more—after which spun it again to the highest of the drop, simply to savor its ridiculousness.)
However alternatively unpredictable Hebden could be on level, on document he’s as dependable as they arrive. 3 is his twelfth solo album, give or take—the proliferation of reside recordings, early-works anthologies, shadowy aspect initiatives, and experimental longform tours complicates the rely—and it embodies the whole lot that has come to outline 4 Tet through the years. There are shuffling UK storage rhythms and moonlit swimming pools of ambient, heavy-lidded head-nodders and floor-filling rave-ups, hand-carved breakbeats and harps, harps, and extra harps.
A couple of years again, I discovered 4 Tet’s consistency on his albums irritating; I longed for him to change issues up, throw the occasional wrench within the works. I puzzled, with 2020’s 16 Oceans, if he used to be getting boxed in by way of his components. However on 3, the familiarity is welcome. The document is much less experimental than 2020’s Parallel, which gathered the 2-stepping membership tracks and atmospheric experiments of his alias ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ. However the trim, eight-track album is well sequenced and properly various, taking in just about each taste of tune that Hebden’s made through the years—dwelling, downbeat, hip-hop, and extra, all given the standard 4 Tet slant. Most significantly, he sounds energized, as regardless that all that mischief-making at the back of the decks had taught him new twists in outdated methods.
