London, UK · electronic

Four Tet

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Kieran Hebden's glowing folk-tronic universe — patient builds that hit like revelation, two decades of textures that make dance music feel handmade.

Kieran Hebden was born in Putney, London, in 1977. At Elliott School he formed the band Fridge with classmates Adem Ilhan and Sam Jeffers, signing a record deal at fifteen and releasing the album Ceefax in 1997 while studying maths and computer science at the University of Manchester.

His solo name is drawn from 4 Tet, a 1971 album by Dutch jazz saxophonist Harry Verbeke. Early Four Tet releases included the singles 'Double Density' and 'Thirtysixtwentyfive', followed in 1999 by the debut album Dialogue, which set hip-hop drum patterns against dissonant jazz samples.

His early albums helped popularise the term folktronica, music that set sampled acoustic instruments, harps, chimes and field recordings against cut-up programmed rhythms. The 2001 album Pause pushed this approach further and brought the label into wider use among critics.

Rounds, released in 2003, became a breakthrough record, spinning off the singles 'She Moves She', 'As Serious as Your Life' and 'My Angel Rocks Back and Forth'. That year Hebden also opened for Radiohead on their European tour and remixed the band's song 'Scatterbrain'.

Over time Hebden's output moved closer to the dancefloor, working with house and techno tempos while keeping handmade textures and gradually unfolding structures. He has recorded extensively in improvised settings with drummer Steve Reid, collaborated with Burial and Thom Yorke, arranged Madlib's 2021 album Sound Ancestors, and remixed artists including Aphex Twin, Radiohead and Madvillain, later performing DJ sets with Skrillex and Fred Again.

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electronic