New Years Eve Countdown: A Year With Four Tet

With his appearance in Room One this New Year’s Eve all confirmed, we thought we’d walk you briefly through Four Tet’s 2012, using some of the tracks he’s released this year to guide you aurally through his last twelve months. It could easily be argued that the most profound way to start one’s year would be to release a track with electronic music demi-God Burial. Well, that’s just what Hebden did in 2012. It began another year of being at the top of electronic music’s agenda - keeping his place as one of the most stand up of electronic artists of our times. Burial + Four Tet – Nova There are a few tropes that are constantly be debated by music authoritarian bods, with the relevance of commercial mixes in the face of free podcasts and the album format versus singles being some of them. Both of these ideas have been toyed with by Hebden over previous years. Firstly in 2011, when he set to work on FABRICLIVE 59, Hebden approached the project in a way that actually made use of the resources presented by our venue, recording the atmospheres and working them into the fabric of his mix so that it played out like an aural journey through the club. Secondly, 2012 was a year that saw him play with the single and album formats, with his Text label releasing a series of dancefloor focused 12”s that only really became an album after the fact of release with them all being collated and repackaged on a new format (digital/CD) on his summer released Pink. Four Tet - Jupiters There was no grander concept behind the release apart from collecting tracks he’d released over the year, together in one handy package. Still, there was a musical theme that gave these tracks more cohesion: the influence of the club environment in their outshining dancey-ness and the underpinning of advanced IDM-esque constructions with garage and house beats. This aspect of his music was also realised on a much wider scale with the event he put on to mark the release of ‘Pink’ at Brixton Academy, his ‘Brixton All Nighter’. Curated by Hebden himself the bill included Ben UFO, Pangea, James Holden and Dan Snaith (aka Caribou and Daphni) who all took over the historical venue for a no frills display of DJing virtuosity. That was back in November and as soon as the event had reached its conclusion we were able to announce our own Four Tet related news, and the fact that he would be our special guest for this year’s NYE bash. It also brings us up to the most recent of his musical offerings, the Jamie XX remix of Pink album track ‘Lion’, a dubwise masterstroke tipping along a crawling beat all the way through. Four Tet – Lion – Jamie XX Remix Photo by Sarah Ginn. Four Tet will be DJing in Room One this New Years eve as will Craig Richards, Terry Francis Laura Jones, Steffi, Virginia while Martin Buttrich will be performing a live set. More info and tickets are here.