Review: Four Tet's There Is Love in You

It’s typically tough to describe electronic music using the pop vernacular, but Four Tet has always been a unique avant artist whose music palatably synthesizes the best qualities of rock and electronic music.

In the past, the results have been as stunning as Rounds (2003), which was captivating in all the right ways, and cemented a standard Four Tet dynamic: rhythmic drum samples a la DJ Shadow, pacing more akin to a rock than electronic album and obscure vocal samples that led to the attachment of the dubious “folktronica” descriptor.

There Is Love in You doesn’t quite match the glory of Rounds, but it sounds fundamentally different and is equally essential. It’s easy to spot the influence of dubstep artist Burial whom Four Tet (aka Kieran Hebden) recently collaborated with on a 12" single; Both find common ground in the use of tantalizing vocal samples and dark textures. But this new record points toward the techno and disco styles of Lindstrøm and The Field, respectively, in equal measure. There Is Love in You is by no means minimal, but it is subtle, resulting in a record that is more scintillating than it is catchy.

Opening track “Angel Echoes” sends a titillating female vocal sample reverberating through space for four minutes before picking up the rhythm with nine minutes of after-hours techno—“Love Cry” is the album’s single, and one of the standout tracks. “Sing” filters electronic videogame bleeps through Four Tet’s unique filter of sunny haze and atmospherics before “This Unfolds” lilts by for a blissful eight minutes.

Four Tet knows well the emotive power of a moving album closer, and “She Just Likes to Fight” is up to par—a stunning and stunningly simple finale to the album. With There Is Love in You, a lovingly crafted affair with a high level of sophistication and replay value, Four Tet has quickly set the bar high for a new decade of electronic music.