January 23, 2010

Album review: Four Tet - There Is Love In You (Domino)

Four Tet fails to move forward on a nevertheless lovely seventh album

6 / 10 There’s disappointment on this album – when the nine-minute-long ‘Love Cry’ ends. Recent collabs with Steve Reid and Burial have left Hebden with an ability to twist the most repetitive rhythm into the kind of low-slung, fucked-in-Kreuzberg, chasm-deep house that causes time’s trajectory to feel perpendicular. The rest of the album never meets this watermark, with Hebden opting for quiet charm over courting wasted Berlin creatives; witness the way he coaxes warmth from cascading 8-bit shards on ‘Sing’ or nudges the pretty folktronica of ‘This Unfolds’ into a crisp, beat-driven head-nodder which never goes anywhere. This LP could have injected some creativity back into 4/4, instead it settles for quaintness.

Louise Brailey

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