Customer Reviews

Everything Ecstatic

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Kieran returns with a shambolic collision of order and chaos. Where "Rounds" was subtle and beautiful, "Everything Ecstatic" is bombastic and forceful.

Dont worry, he hasnt gone and made an industrial metal album!

Basically this album rides the two extremes of "Rounds'" personality: melody and spontaneity.

Where Rounds found a beautiful medium between these two, Everything Ecstatic shows the fight between them.

Crossing the territories of Hip hop, krautrock, foltronica (a label that never completely fit him anyway), spiritual jazz, and post rock, this album comes off as a beautiful mess.

In fact, its more like his work with Fridge than his previous Four Tet releases. Tracks often contain solid beats, and strong melodies that, as the song continues, are completely deconstructed. These tunes often end up in sonic chaos, noise bursts, and complete mayhem, before equilibrium is once again maintained and restored.

It is this collision that makes Everything Ecstatic both a fantastic recording, yet not quite cohesive and purposeful enough for five stars.

You can see the influence that his freindship with Dan Snaith (Caribou/Manitoba) has had. The crashing cymbals, melodic sensibility and sonic frenzies.

But rest assured, there is still a strong sense that this is a Kieran Hebden work. And a fine one at that.

4 stars.

I have been a big fan of Fourtet ever since I first heard "No More Mosquitos". All of his music was refreshingly creative and easy on the ears. He's demonstrated a keen ability to soften the normally harsher sound of IDM style beats time and time again. You still get a lot of that with "Everything Ecstatic"... real drum kits, guitar riffs and hand claps sampled and chopped, the same organic windchimes and buzzing insects. Luckily, Kieran has expanded his arsenal of sounds to include more traditional techno kits that he uses in some rather non-traditional ways. As another reviewer mentioned, he uses a lot more 303 and 909 patterns. These machines sound so cliched these days, but not here. Kieran breaths new life into them, making 303 patterns sound just as organic and natural as those buzzing mosquito wings. On other tracks he maintains some minimal techno flat beats worthy of Detroits dirtiest tech dancehalls.

This album is fantastic, plain and simple. I am glad to see Fourtet is evolving with the times rather than trying to maintain the status-quo that he helped create.

I don't like to compare this to "rounds" or "pause" necessarily, but seeing as how this is in the same body of work, I'm kind of obliged. The previous albums had their abstractions and concepts but Everything Ecstatic takes that to an extreme. This album is obviously Kieran Hebdan coming into his Steve-Reid Exchange Sessions musical persona. There is alot less acoustic instrumentation and folk texture and more electric chaos. The record still sounds like four tet made it, but it almost sounds like the magazine articles pushed the "folktronica" tag so much that Hebdan abandoned it, and i don't blame him. It took me awhile as a Four Tet fan before i committed to buying this album, but when i did i still enjoyed it and gave it alot of time. I might go as far as to say I enjoy this more than "Pause", but the two records feel so vastly different that I couldn't justify doing so. Everything Ecstatic wins my praise, but it didn't make me fall in love with the Four Tet style like "Rounds" did.

Listeners who felt a little short-changed with Four Tet's previous releases due to their somewhat leisurely paced nature, should find "Everything Ecstatic" a refreshing album.

Here we have a far more buoyant and assured release, with less of the "pling plong" found on Pause and Rounds. It sounds like Kieran Hebden was perhaps listening to a lot of Fluke or Advokat whilst making this record.

Also, for the first time, it appears that he has done away with any clear "music style fusion" concept. Here, he toys with many styles, including jazz, funk, progressive rock, and, even acid house! Yep, there are 303's and 909's making their presence here.

Standout tracks are "Sun Drums and Soil" and "And Then Patterns". Great stuff.

i really enjoy this album. it is a lot harder and more forceful than his other releases but it still has that class Hebden sound with noise and glitch which i love. if you havent done so yet, you should probably check out the videos that go along with this album. very well done.

i put this album almost up there with Rounds but i like Rounds just a little bit more. this one i felt like sometimes you had to be more in the "right mood" to listen to it whereas with Rounds i could pop in anywhere. but i do love love this album.

A Joy (a little repetitive but still very awesome)

Smile Around the Face ( i dont know how you couldnt like this song. very happy, perfect noise and spastic drums)

And Then Patterns ( i really enjoy the melody)

High Fives (i think my favorite on the album. the climax at the end is just too perfect. the video for this one is so awesome)

You Were There With Me (very good song. i always find myself repeating this song when it ends. its so beautiful)

good album. Four Tet didnt fail to amaze me again

That's what I would describe Four Tet's Everything Esctatic. It sounds like it was a blast to make. Kieran Hebden is the man behind Four Tet, and his IDM/funkish songs sound really joyous. Take the first track "A Joy," a song with a lot of out-of-time effects running through a skippy beat and pulsating bass. What really makes the track though is the constant beat underlying it. Smile Around The Face is another joyous upbeat song, with some chipmunk soul singers and powerful drumming.

Other tunes are more experimental, such as the jazzy "Sun Drums and Soil," the dark and moody "And Then Patterns", and the quiet minamalism of "You Were There With Me." There is a constant flow to the album, and the feel is like being surrounded by life.

On the whole, this is album that just makes you feel good. You can groove to it, play it in the background while doing other things, or play it at a party. It's quite a good enviroment to be in.

This is a much more aggressive release than I expected from Keiran Hebdan, the reigning king of folktronica, which is obvious from the first track "A Joy," a big beat banger aimed somewhere between the beginning of Chemical Brothers' "Come With Us" and Squarepusher's more ambient insanity. Only "Sleep, Eat Food, Have Visions" goes a little overboard when it busts out all tribal techno three minutes in. The rest of this album is the sound of a producer hitting his stride in the studio and continuing to grow as an artist with every succeeding release. For the most part, this album is Hebdan's usual mix of eclectic instruments, worldly beats, and static production only classier than ever before with more attention paid to DJs and the night crowd than indie cafe patrons. Everything Ecstatic harkens back to the passion of the old school raver days while evolving to relevant. You'll be hard pressed to find a Four Tet fan who doesn't think this is his most entertaining release yet.

Four Tet has always embraced some element of noise in their work; on EVERYTHING ECSTATIC, they add a new dimension to that noise: chaos. Certainly, "A Joy" has that chaos to spare. It's almost a rebuke to the folktronica tag that has plagued Four Tet since its inception. "Smile Around the Face" reimposes some structure to the songwriting with a bright, almost picnic-ready melody. "Sun Drums and Soil" carries its wistful tune through layers of hiss and distortion, punctuated by a horn line and urgent percussion. The percussive elements comes to the fore in "High Fives," while "Sleep, Eat Food, Have Visions" adds some 808 squelches into the fray to psychedelic effect. My favorite here, "And Then Patterns" sounds as if it could have come off of ROUNDS, with its lovely combination of beats and melancholy. No surprise, then, that it's my favorite, though there's something admirable about they way Four Tet continues to grow, especially with the dreamy, gamelan-toned "You Were There With Me."

Inevitably, Fourtet's current release will have to stand against its impressive forerunner almost 2 years ago. It's not a flattering comparison though.

Whereas the previous album was triumphant in its innovativeness and intriguing abstraction, this one is a rather confused affair that seems to lack orientation and focus.

Most of the elements found in previous Fourtet albums are there. The unique drum n bass beats, the bizzare melodies, the eerieness. But it's the sum that fails and not so much its parts.
It's an album that leaves you impressed with its bizzarity but indifferent as it barely envokes any mood that can be pinpointed to something specific.

Listeners who are discovering Fourtet through this album might see this differently, but otherwise we've heard much better stuff from this one-man-band.

Beautiful album. 3rd best, but that doesn't mean its not amazing.