It’s probably a bit of a bind being a genius. Easy when you’re blissfully ignorant of course, but when popular consensus loudly christens you as such it’s got to put a frustrating watermark on your day. But then, Kieran Hebden (aka Four Tet) probably spreads marmalade on his toast with a certain amount of grace, if not a mark of genius, such is the unassuming, almost accidental nature of his. And there are those that deserve the tag. He drifted through his latter teenage years and into his twenties with very little actual fuss, but has been met with wide-eyed, almost universal acclaim every step of the way – first with ambitious electro-post-rockers Fridge, and currently under his eclectic solo Four Tet moniker, and also as remixer and producer. Not to mention time in breakthrough period Badly Drawn Boy’s backing band. And it’s not hard to see why, even to the uninitiated it’s difficult to deny or find fault with the light fingered perfection that permeates all his work.
And it’s this same stuff that licks at every corner (okay, surface) of his latest, ‘Rounds’. Still refusing to adhere to any one single grid reference (or, more likely, being incapable of sitting absolutely still – delete as you see fit), he brilliantly fails to rearrange or replicate any of his previous work, as such. Though obviously some characteristics remain. Yes, so this is the man who supposedly invented folktronica (see ‘And They All Look Broken Hearted’). But it’s just like periodically visiting a ridiculously likeable friend and finding them each time modelling a different page of ‘Face Furniture Fortnightly: Big Tattoos and Piercings’. Same smile underneath, it’s just the world raises a slightly different eyebrow to them every time they step out their front door.
Few eyebrows fluctuating here, with ‘Rounds’ being such a beautiful relaxant. Plenty of eyelids sliding blissfully shut. Even through the blunt and fragmented hip-hop beats, sharp avant-garde rhythms and unexpected interludes. Kieran’s trick is not to show you what he’s made, but to lead you by the hand like Gene Wilder in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and show you the inner workings of his bubble as if these cross-pollinations and collisions already exist. ‘As Serious As Your Life’ for instance is hypnotically disorientating, with eastern strings randomly criss-crossing frantic jazz drumming, as if the drummer has just lost his head and is in the final throes. But it all falls into line to makes perfect sense. Similarly ‘Hands’ is the few moments when you flick your wrist to change the tuning on your radio, crossing frequencies and summoning unrelated sounds into one mesh, time-stretched to 5 minutes. I’d say don’t touch that dial, but that’s kind of the whole point.