Released: 15/03/24
More due on 24/05/24
Featuring a press release as sparse as his live shows (it’s essentially just a track-listing and credits), the impetus behind Kieran Hebden’s hotly anticipated new LP is impossible to fathom – and one gets the impression that that’s exactly how the Londoner likes it. Even the title is obscurantist, given that it’s Four Tet’s 12th album proper – up there with Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult for wildly confusing names. Perhaps, like that title, it’s also a fractions thing, three going into 12 four times – a nod to the classic 4/4 EDM time signature; or maybe it’s a religious reference: to the Wiccan Triple Goddess, as expounded on by Robert Graves in his classic thesis on poetic myth, The White Goddess; or the divine Trimurti in Hinduism, a nod to his Indian heritage. Or perhaps it’s just a meaningless title chosen at the last minute in lieu of anything better.
At this point you may be thinking, ‘Enough pointless speculation already – what does the record sound like?!’ Which is absolutely fair. Well, it’s classic Four Tet – the ambient, contemplative tracks are all crisp sampled drums, crystalline synth melodies, warm analogue bass lines; the faster tracks are perfect for an Ashram rave. All sound like they were record in the late 90s/early 2000s. But this is not a criticism, for Hebden’s active resistance to the vagaries of contemporary EDM trends is something to be celebrated, as one gets the feeling that his beguiling, transportive sound is not just a thing that he has conjured, but something that he actually resides within – and so while he may not feel the need to explain album titles, let alone the ‘meaning’ behind his tracks, we do get to experience the world as he hears it, and that is more than enough.