Interview: Kieran Hebden on why he had to step away from Four Tet
It's been four years since Four Tet, aka Kieran Hebden has released a new album. Doesn't seem like it, right? Well that's because he's been busy collaborating on a number of albums with jazz drumming maestro Steve Reid and fitting a sneaky 12 inch with fellow London electronic hero Burial. But he's back with the typically fantastic, clubbed-up There is Love In You out next week and tells Ragged Words he's absolutely no idea what he's going to do next.
What struck us initially when listening to There is Love In You was that it was perhaps an even more electronic and more programmed record than previous efforts. Is that an accurate first impression?
It's more programmed than the stuff I've been doing with Steve Reid but otherwise it's the same method and the same way put together the same way as say Rounds and Everything Ecstatic. I guess I'm just working with very kind of different rhythms at the moment so I was going for that more locked in, dancey, house rhythm to it.
That's something that you can certainly hear on the first single 'Love Cry', one review said it wouldn't sound out of place blasting through the PA at Berline's Panama Bar. That's something we can also particularly hear on a track like 'Sing' Was that what you were going for here?
Yeah, 'Love Cry' was especially made as a club record. That was the whole concept behind it. I was making it while I was doing this residency at this club Plastic People in London where I was trying out the mixes I was working on all the time. I'd wanted to get it just right so that it would be as good as possible when I played it during DJ sets. Tracks like that were made so much with the idea of hearing it in a club in mind.
I'm always curious of how long a track like that would take to finish?
'Love Cry' was probably the first track I made for the record. The initial idea for a track, getting the main loops together might come quite quickly, like half an hour or so, but then getting the composition and mix right, I might be tweaking it loads and loads. I'd come back to it every few days and think 'it needs a bit more bass drum or this sections too long'. Especially too with trying it out in a club, I'd have been playing a load of records that I love and the main thing is making sure that it stands up next to those. That it doesn't sound suddenly limp or just... bad. You just want something that still sounds heavy and lively. So there'll be little adjustments like that but the main ideas for tracks often come quite quickly.
This is the first full-length Four Tet album in four years and of course you have been very busy in between doing quite varied things. Were any of these new tracks or ideas in the back of your mind for a while or was this a complete fresh start?
It was kind of started afresh about a year ago. I'd had the Ringer EP out and after that had happened, I thought maybe I am ready to do an album now and I just sat down with a totally clean slate and tried to find the direction I wanted to go with it. I mean none of these themes were just hanging about waiting for me to do a full album.
Having done a lot of collaborative work in between - you mentioned Steve Reid but you've worked even more recently with Burial. Was it strange to be back working on your own or once Ringer was done or were you itching for more of the same?
That was the good thing, I think after Everything Ecstatic, I was just desperate to do something different and I wasn't feeling like I was pushing myself anymore. It had all got a bit comfortable. I think I was looking for some really different things and I held out to the point where working on my own again would feel like a refreshing thing. I did enjoy it. When you keep putting out more and more records, you start putting more and more pressure on yourself and you think 'is there any point to this? Am I just repeating myself?'. So there was definitely some anxiety during the making of the record but generally, it's been a fun experience.
With the projects in between, most particularly having worked so much with Steve Reid, what did those experiences bring to the new record. Did, say, working with Steve change the way you looked at rhythms?
Hugely. I think after working with Steve, it's changed things for me forever. He's such a master or rhythm and drumming and I just learned so much about how to make rhythms work within a song. The way I use dynamics and the whole way I work on a drum machine now has totally changed. I just think in a whole different way. I think my stuff in the past was more Hip Hop influenced and quite a lot slower but working with Steve, the music became a lot faster and had this fast pulse underneath the whole time. That together with the djing I was doing meant that when I started working on this album, whether I liked it are lot, the rhythms were much more different, more foceful so I think the stuff I've done has changed things forever.
As I mentioned you more recently worked with Burial, work I assume that was done around the same time as the album. Tell us about that because obviously we know very little about Burial aside from his music.
I went to school with him so I've known him for quite a long time and the collaboration with him was actually mostly done before I started work on the new album. We were working on it for a long time but we were just slow in getting it done because we didn't do it by email, we worked in the studio together on it. I'm really proud of that record, I think it was exactly what we had set out to do. It felt like the combination of our sounds and ideas worked out exactly like I'd hoped it would. I remember when we finished it, we both stood back and felt genuinely just so happy with the record and it seemed to get a really great reaction. And it was probably quite inspiring for me to do a collaboration with someone who works with a different kind of mindset. Someone who also puts sounds together in a different way to anyone else.
Given Burial's low profile, when the split came out last year there were a couple of internet conspiracy theories floating about that actually Kieran Hebden was Burial. Did you hear that one at all!?
There was all sorts of random things going around but I'd been back in touch with him since his his first 12 inch came out and we had the idea to work together ages ago but then things just got slowly more and more crazy with what was going on with him, the Mercury and all of that. But he doesn't acknowledge any of that, he just wants to get on with his music so we decided just to try and ignore the whole thing and make some music we were proud of. That's also why we put it out in such a low key way, if anything we needed people to listen to the record and let that be all that counts and the only way we could do that was to suddenly put it out it a calm and quiet sort of way.
With Burial coming through over the last few years and being joined now by a guy like Joy Orbison, whose remixed you and is supporting you in London next month, are you excited by the talent that's emerging in UK electronica? And is it very different to when you started off solo a decade ago?
It feels like a good time in London for electronic music for sure. There's a lot of fresh, new electronic music around and really, really gifted young producers and that's really, really cool. When I started out it was a really exciting time too because you had Warp Records in its prime, the whole two-step and garage thing was happening in London which is quite similar to what's happened out of the dubstep thing now where you've got a lot of young kids just making records in their bedrooms and pressing out white labels. I was a teenager when drum and bass happened and that same madness in London, with loads and loads of fresh music coming out very quickly so it just feels like a continuation of that tradition at the moment. As waves of that music go, it feels like we're right back up at the peak with great records coming from all directions. Every few weeks, I'm hearing something that sounds so fresh and exciting. There are lots of good club nights going on and people are really making the effort with electronic music again which for me, is really exciting.
What sort of stuff are you listening to at the moment?
I find it pretty dead for albums at the moment so it's all about singles and 12 inches for me which seem to be coming in thick and fast, people like Floating Points, Joy Orbison who you mentioned, Gold Panda who put out a couple of good things last year, Darkstar put out some good 12 inches and there's people like Untold too. I like stuff like Roscoe and Hard House Banton and all the more UK funky stuff, I think there's things on the fringes of that that are darker and just deep nasty club music. I listen to a lot of European techno stuff too. I'd probably buy every single thing coming out that Villa Lobos has done for instance. His records just sound like nobody elses, I feel like he's in another world
Given that there is so much stuff exciting you, are there anymore collaborations planned?
With the album coming out, people are doing remixes for me. Like you said, Joy Orbison just did a mix for me and Floating Points just handed one in which will be on the next single but for me the focus is going to be on touring and DJ sets and that's what I'll be doing for the rest of the year. As the stuff I've been doing recently is a bit more clubby, the shows I'm going to be doing are going to crossover into that world a little bit more. I think that's going to make them fun nights.
Beyond that, are there any plans. Might it be another four years before the next Four Tet album?
I've absolutely no idea! My ideal situation is when I don't know what on earth I'm going to doing in six months time. For me, everything's best when anything could happen. I try not to plan too much.
In your words