123. Four Tet - Rounds (2003)

Four Tet are usually thrown in the "electronica" bin, but that makes no sense to me because this stuff sounds closer to a more melodic and less improvisatory Tortoise: the emphasis here is on live instrumentation and songwriting and less on "exploration". I love this album. I think it's gorgeous. Kieran Hebden seems to have built a career on expanding the prepared piano sound Aphex Twin got into on Drukqs, and the whole thing is easily recognizable as a single style but there are enough variations on it that it never becomes boring. There are so many highlights here--the languid "Unspoken", the frantic "Spirit Fingers" and of course "Slow Jam", which features one of the greatest instrumental melodies of the decade. What really brings this album over the top is the rejection of length: most instrumental records are way too long, the artists apparently laboring under the delusion that eschewing vocals and a normal pop-song structure gives them free reign to let their songs run for eight minutes under the same repetitive pattern. There's only one track on this album that goes over 8, and the majority are between four and five--these are short tracks, comparatively, and each does its business and gets out. I'd be more willing to classify this as jazz than anything else--but it's a new kind of jazz, one just as technically proficient but one that focuses on emotional and melodic connection instead of endless instrumental wanking: a Marquee Moon to most jazz's Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs. Beautiful.

MY RATING: 9.2

Four Tet - "Slow Jam"