Four Tet has a production technique he uses to create atmosphere and the feeling of a unique world which exists within his tracks.
Appearing on the Tape Notes podcast, where he opened up some of his most-loved tracks to explore his approach to production, Four Tet – also known as Kieran Hebden – explained how he works with texture and subtlety to create a connection between the listener and the music.
Delving into his track Skater, which is inspired by a time when he watched his daughter ice skating and felt cut off from the noise of the outside world, Hebden shares how he built the song and even used real-life recorded sounds of the skating.
“All the other things that happen are there to guide you through the track,” he says, playing some vocal parts. “They’re very quiet and subliminal. I didn’t make them like a lead part of the song because it’s like I want the melody and the groove of it all to sort of be here, and then the ice skating and the humans and all the people and stuff echoes around in the distance.
“There’s an atmosphere there that puts it in a sort of world. I use a lot of things like that where there’s little quiet echoey bits of vocals and noises and little things happening all the time combined with everything else.”
He adds, “I’ve always done it, but then working on the Burial records for instance, working on stuff with him… He invented so many levels of doing that in ways that people have never thought, like tons of subliminal little sounds and textures all the time.”
He later continues, “I learnt early on that having these little bits of texture mixed in with everything actually put things in a world. Especially when you’re doing electronic music, it really puts things in a zone that is a great device for giving a way for people to connect to it without them really even understanding why they’re connecting to it, you know?”
Check out the podcast below:
