silence kit #6

Four Tet
Rounds [Domino, 2003]

In another one of those supposedly random things, I was thumbing my way through this Haruki Murakami novel (After Dark) when the Four Tet song "My Angel Rocks Back And Forth" drifts, via my earphones, into the chance late-nite reunion at Denny's between two old acquaintances, the young, aspirant jazz musician Takahashi and foreign studies undergraduate Mari in her Red Sox cap. There are probably tons of other anecdotes that you and I can similarly cook up like this, about particular songs or melody being matched to particular books or movies or just moods, but I think such a random-fuck approach holds up pretty well for Kieran Hebden's music. In the book, Takahashi and Mari held conversations about everything from her sister's long slumber to plenty of other people's problems, the chapters keeping time dutifully while the post-midnight Tokyo portrayed by Murakami bristles with sensuality. To me, Rounds captures the the same passively infinite rhythm as some of Murakami's conversation pieces and Hebden never quite managed to hit the same high mark in his several follow-ups. And despite it being, for all purpose and intent, electronic instrumental music, the line of beauty of Rounds is all in the sense of naturalism Hebden brings to the songs, an assortment of spaceshifting, inconspicious sounds bulging across your consciousness.