Four Tet Adds Entry to his Musical Dairy

"I don't know. I just do it the way I feel." Those words are a quite nice, but unexpected, summary of Kieran Hebden, also known as Four Tet. I had expected a far more esoteric motivation behind the combination of genres and the mish-mash of drum loops and processed melodies that Four Tet places in every record.

Four Tet insists he has been doing it "the way he feels" since he was a kid. "I must have started music when I was 12 or 13 years old. I was given a guitar for my birthday, and I sorta took to it. I started forming bands straight away in school, and the record deals started coming." They started coming at 15; at 17, he signed to Output. Now he's 26, having released three albums with his original rock project, Fridge, and four albums under his personal experiment, Four Tet. Both bands are currently on the same label, Domino, but their music springs from completely different ideas.

"I started my music career with instruments, guitar and all that," Hebden says. "When I went to college, I got a computer. That opened up a whole new world of possibilities. I wanted to see where I could go with it, so I started the Four Tet project."

The Four Tet project relies heavily on computer-engineered music, a technique Hebden likes because of the musical freedom it provides. "Now, my music is very computer-based. There's a lot of improvisation with it, in my show. I take elements from my songs and create new music with my computers during the show. I want people to get an idea of where my musical head is at that minute," Hebden says. This attitude applies not only to Hebden's shows, but his music in general. It is as if he is always looking for the fastest way to make the ideas in his head audible. "When I look back on my records, it's kind of like a diary," he says. "I can remember what I was thinking and doing when the melodies came out."

Hebden says his new album, Everything Ecstatic, is very much an entry in that diary. "I made this new record really quickly, two months at most. I wanted to preserve this manic energy with it."

Most of the songs on the new album have something to do with Hebden's daily life as well as his thoughts about music, as with "Smile Around the Face." "That song came from, well, one afternoon I was listening to religious music. These people thought that the music they made was communicating with something higher, like, a god. I'm not particularly religious, but I was really interested in the idea of making music that speaks beyond yourself. I want to make that kind of music, the kind that inspires, grows and grows, music that just comes in a million different frequencies. In that song, 'Smile Around the Face,' I was just trying to create that euphoria."

Though Hebden has a relatively soft-spoken demeanor, you can see the songs building in him when he talks. You can see his bewilderment when he mentions "music that speaks beyond yourself," or his excitement when mentions music that "inspires, grows and grows." The manic energy he wanted to capture on Ecstatic is immediately apparent, both in the way he speaks and his focus on constantly producing music.

Though he's been on tour in the U.S. the past four weeks, Hebden is already planning for what comes next: a return to the original intent of Four Tet. "I started and it was just going to be one track, 'Thirtysix Twentyfive.' That was a jazz thing for me," he said. Now, after his excursions into hip-hop, electronica, and sampling, he's returning to a big jazz project. "I've got some big plans with Steve Reid. We are going to put out several jazz-themed improvisational records next year. I think it should be two albums-its a big project. I'm really looking forward to it."

He may constantly be working, but that does not prevent him from enjoying life a little too. He'll be returning to the UK tomorrow to tour a bit more, then take one week off, during which, he said, "I have to see my girlfriend. And sleep. Lots of both."

Girlfriend and sleep, in that order, and then onto more music. What better way to "do it the way you feel"?