Impressionistic Music

Impressionistic Music

It's well past midnight. You can tell from the empty streets and the dark windows of shops, of houses, that it's later than it feels. You don't mind, though. The air is warm and sticky; there's a breeze gently rushing past your ears and cheeks and arms and thighs as you're biking around town. Or you might be driving, who knows. Somewhere, on wide, deserted lanes surrounded by fresh and empty lawns. You're alone, but the stillness isn't silent, or the silence is not still. Quite the contrary. It's a symphony of sounds - humming neon and occasional sprinkler, rumble of air conditioning, a dog's bark, the whirring of the bike wheels or the pulse of your motor or the crunch of your feet on the sidewalk, like a soft beat - all of it coagulating into ephemeral patterns. They flicker in and out of your ear like a radio that refuses to tune in.

You're back home, wherever that is, in the stairs, at the door, sitting on your sofa, the lights are off, the window open onto the street and the sleeping city and its glow, the long leaves of plants jostling ever so slightly, adding their own autonomous rhythm to the night's music. A drink in your glass, colored reflections in the ice cubes. It tastes like nothing you've ever had; sweet, but also slightly bitter, each gulp a new and delicate balance of tastes. There's fruit in there, a distinct, natural velvet on your tongue, but something sharp and tingly suggests other, stranger chemicals. You imagine their shape, intricate, organic designs. The shapes begin to dance at the corners of your vision as the symphony of silence has gained fabulous momentum. Its loops and rhythms blossom, bubble, shimmer, refusing to settle into repetition. You're drunk. You're happy. It's a cosmic sort of happiness, extending well beyond the reaches of your body into the sounds and shadows all around you. There is Love in You.

(WTF? It's very difficult to describe Four Tet's music. When I bought my first album of his, I'd read several different reviews and still had no idea what I was paying for. I guess the title did it for me - Everything Ecstatic, who could resist? I've now listened to it a few dozen times, along with the extremely unsettling mix he compiled for the DJ Kicks series; all the same, if someone were to ask me what Four Tet sounds like, I'd be incapable of giving them a straight answer. Granted, There is Love in You is slightly easier to describe than the man's earlier work, if only because it references more "traditional" genres of repetitive electronic music (which is to say, the album has a beat and a progressive structure - for the most part). But what all of Four Tet's productions have in common, and what makes them dazzlingly beautiful, is tremendous evocative power.)

Four Tet: "There Is Love In You"

Domino, 2010

FC