Before you ask “Kieran Hebden doing Fabric…really?”, realise that this is Four Tet, version 2.0. He drops 2-step old and new, proper London garage (KMA’s immaculate all-timer ‘Cape Fear’) dubstepped retaliations (Burial’s livid ‘Street Halo’) and super-low 4x4s. He has fateful serenity tangling with rudebwoy pluck through crackly pirate radio reception, smuggling in head-scratching interludes – field recordings seemingly from the club’s toilets/smoking section – and one ’70s synthesizer pitstop. And he leaves as bass music’s foremost genealogist, arranging ripped vinyl with a rarity value of hen’s teeth, leading all avant-garde roads back to pre-Millennium bass watersheds and finding everybody has at least one speaker-related grudge inside them.
9/10
Words by Matt Oliver
