Kieran Hebden is a rare kind of producer.
He's collaborated with the likes of Radiohead, Aphex Twin and Neneh Cherry, and his influence spans widely across electronic music from Burial to Bonobo and Bicep.
He’s managed to build an impressive catalogue of critically acclaimed releases, remixes and collaborations, have fans frothing over anything that bears his name, command top billing in the world’s biggest clubs, yet he's far from what you'd expect of a superstar producer/DJ.
“His music effortlessly reflects the qualities that define the human experience at its best - playful, open-hearted, curious, connective, warm,” says longtime Four Tet fan Tim Shiel.
That celebration of humanity with all its colourful hues, moods and quietly prized moments found their first fullest expression on Four Tet’s third album Rounds.
‘Hands’ blurs the lines between the human and the spiritual, the emotional and the intellectual, as heartbeats, drums, cymbals, chimes and morse code bleeps patter, radiate then gently fade.
‘She Moves She’ feels stylish and purposeful by design, but more than a little mischievous by nature. ‘Unspoken’ is a meditative piece with an ambling piano loop set to a thick beat and shimmering tambourine and the album is also marked by Hebden meeting and falling in love with his wife at the time too, those emotional sentiments reflected in ‘My Angel Rocks Back and Forth.’
"I really like those sorts of uplifting melodies and a sense of optimistic, romantic music at the end of the day. When you can listen to music and you can be down or something, the right record at the right time, really gives you a sense of everything in the world is going to be okay. You don’t need to worry,” Hebden told triple j's Soundlab in 2003.
Its Hebden’s sense of calm, his curiosity, together with his love of fusing melody and emotion with his experimental instincts that have maintained his wide regard as one of music’s most forward thinking producers.
