so this past Monday i went to see an in-store performance by Mr. Kieran Hebden a.k.a. Four Tet at Other Music. packed house, good size crowd for the store. Kieran worked off of a pair of Sony VAIO laptops and a bunch of effects processors running through a mixer. this allowed him to improvise during the songs, punch in the beats and take them out, as well as flood the environment with random sounds. honestly, his performance was a lot more brutal than i was expecting. anytime you see the multitude plugging their ears because their senses are being assaulted, you know it's on. you have all of these pretty tones and rhythms, but eventually they're overtaken by mass distortion and digital squeals. it was almost as if he was sonically saying to the audience, "if any of you describe my music as 'folktronica' one more time..."

heads probably came away from the show looking at him in a different light (and not a positive one, perhaps), but i dug it. precisely the sonic assault i needed. anyone wanting to know more about Four Tet can check out his website and cop a few MP3s here, one of which includes "Smile Around The Face," a wonderful song from his latest album and one of the tracks that he played at the in-store. (the album version is considerably toned down from what he did to the song on Monday, though...)