Welcome to "Nothing Not New," a yearlong project in which New Times editorial operations manager Jay Bennett, a 40-year-old music fan and musician, will listen only to music released in 2010. Each Monday through Friday, he will listen to one new record (no best ofs, reissues, or concert recordings) and write about it. Why? Because in the words of his editor, Martin Cizmar, he suffers from "aesthetic atrophy," a wasting away of one's ability to embrace new and different music as one ages. Read more about this all-too-common ailment here.
Artist: Four Tet
Title: There Is Love in You
Release date: January 26, 2010
Label: Domino
Between yesterday's "Nothing Not New" entry, Delphic's Acolyte, and today's entry, Four Tet's There Is Love in You, I'm pretty much electronica'd out. I hope tomorrow's entry provides a much-needed blast of three-chord rock. Ah, wishful thinking.
Compared with Four Tet's abstract soundscapes, the music created by Delphic sounds like good old-fashioned pop music. At least you can dance to it (not that I've tried yet). Four Tet's brand of electronica is a hodgepodge of digitally created bleeps and bloops over hypnotic, mid-tempo (or slower) beats.
I haven't been to a planetarium since I visited Chicago's Adler Planetarium in grade school (back when the synthesizers needed to make this kind of music were the size of your average walk-in closet) but I imagine that if I went to one now, Four Tet's atmospheric chill-out music is what they would play as the audience stared up at the fake night sky in the darkened auditorium.
This is definitely nighttime music, and maybe I'm just listening to it the wrong way: at work, on iTunes, on a sunny day, while drinking an ice-cold cup of Diet Coke. So, as further research, I'm going to attempt to listen to Four Tet the way God intended, and report back to you. The next time me and the missus are out in the backyard, drinking adult beverages and enjoying the stars in the beautiful Arizona sky at night, I'm going to listen to There Is Love in You to get achieve the disc's full effect.
What do you Four Tet fans think of this effort? What's the appeal of this music for you? Drop a comment in the space below.
Best track: "This Unfolds," which contains the closest thing to a riff on this record.
Rotation: Low, especially while listening at work, which requires a certain level consciousness in order to retain employment.
Deja Vu: The soundtrack to any episode of "The Star Hustler"
I'd rather listen to: Songs.
Grade: D (still more enjoyable than Midlake!)
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