, , —

Four Tet Remixes Your Life


It's late. Cold outside. It's February. I'm drunk. I veer into Poquitos for the late night happy hour. They have table-top fire-pits (best invention ever? possibly). I am toasty. My beer has arrived. I am toastier. There is music playing. I don't recognize it, but the drums are good. These are good drums. This fire is warm. Wait, I know this tune. Almost. I hear Thom Yorke. I know Thom Yorke. But I don't recognize this.......oh shit, it's a remix of Atoms for Peace. Wow. These drums are good.

That is how I tripped and fell down the remix rabbit hole that Kieran Hebden (better known under the moniker Four Tet) had dug right under my nose. Four Tet creates excellent, earthy electronic music that stands tall on it's own, but I had no idea that he had remixed so many of my favorite artists. In a land where a remix often consists of throwing a house beat behind the original and calling it a day, I was happy to follow Hebden's white rabbit through an unfamiliar wonderland of songs I thought I knew well. Here are a few of my favorite finds:

Thom Yorke: Atoms for Peace



My gateway drug. It begins with a riotous drum loop (raw and unprocessed, you can still hear voices from the original session) and a synth tone bouncing indecisively between two notes. Four Tet is spectacular at retaining the lively feel of an actual drummer in his loops. The repetitive drum fill, a tiny moment from another performance captured and elongated to great effect, is arresting. When Thom Yorke begins to sing, the most distinctive feature of the original track (the asymmetrical bass line) is still missing and the familiar vocals sound more intimate, more isolated. When that low-end melody finally slips in during the second verse it is joined by chiming xylophone. After the second chorus, Hebden adds a gorgeous key change that doesn't exist in the original.

Andrew Bird: Imitosis


Leading the track with a funky, stuttering beat and slowly adding in the familiar elements of the song (pizzicato violin) while blending them with the unfamiliar (layers upon layers of arpeggiated electric guitar). A thumping bassline drops halfway through the track, lifting and propelling the song into a much busier vibe than the original. Occasionally Hebden slices through the sonic underbrush, eliminating most of the competing elements and leaving open spaces for Bird's tongue and brain twisting lyrics to emerge more clearly.

Kings of Convenience - The Weight of My Words


Sweet Jesus, it's baby-making time. The original track is a gorgeous acoustic reverie about the atrophy of communication in a relationship. Four Tet completely removes the gentle harmonized acoustic guitars, adds a mid-tempo beat that sounds straight out of a Morcheeba song, and scrambles the vocals to the point that they are merely texture, almost wordless sounds. The original is elegant romantic decay. The remix is slow burning make-up sex.

Madvillain - Great Day


Four Tet trades the jazzy hip-hop sample of Stevie Wonder's "How Can You Believe" for an abstracted, reversed acoustic guitar loop and a slow-building beat that doesn't drop until the song is nearly complete. The first segment has Doom flowing over swirling guitar arpeggios with no back-beat at all, lending an otherworldly, spoken quality to the lyrics, a completely disoriented rhythm. Hebden removes the beat from hip-hop, takes your focus away from the kick and snare, forces you to stop bobbing your head and listen, makes you earn the 15 seconds of hard bop that is hidden in the last third of the song. "Exit Music for a Film" for the hip-hop heads.



1 comments

Post a Comment

what do you think?

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)