Three Four Tet

Album review

It is no surprise that a period of relative solo silence followed the release of Parallel (2020), Kieran Hebden's eleventh full-length under the celebrated Four Tet alias. Amongst a series of outstanding AV shows conceived alongside the art and technology collective Squidsoup, running his label Text Records, and collaborations with artists like Thom Yorke, Burial, Chloé Robinson and Ellie Goulding, it's hard to see where the studio time might have fit in. After a 2023 victory lap which saw Hebden tour the world as part of the Pangbourne House Mafia (an unlikely, but ultimately transcendent super troupe comprising himself, Fred again.. and Skrillex), a return to the studio seemed inevitable—necessary even—to heal from the relentlessness of recent times.

Four Tet returns in 2024 with Three, an 8-track LP that threads the needle between reflective synth ballads and stripped-back dancefloor cuts. It picks up where Hebden left off with Parallel, experimenting further with analog hardware and modular synthesis: methods which are quietly replacing his famed sampling techniques as the bedrock of his sonic language. He summons his inner Boards of Canada on tracks like "Storm Crystals" and "Loved," where plucky synth melodies twinkle across gentle backbeats and tape-saturated foley samples fill out the upper frequency spectrum. Necessary contrast comes in the form of "Daydream Repeat" and "31 Bloom"—dancier movements that showcase the sharp, textured percussion synonymous with Four Tet. The album concludes with the expansive synth epic, "Three Drums," which builds progressively over the first 5 minutes, before melting into low-register chords and pitch-shifted vocalisations. While Three might not propel Four Tet's sound into any strikingly new territory, it's a dreamy, soothing body of work that fans may be keen to engage with on a more meditative level. © Finn Kverndal/Qobuz