Four Tet - New Energy

Pitchfork 80

Kieren Hebden’s pursuit of new sounds has found him digging into his own catalog. New Energy is a wide-ranging album that connects the warmth of his early work to his latest club experiments.

The Guardian 60

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There are those for whom Kieran Hebden’s drift towards the dancefloor is something to lament, and those for whom it was an unexpected flash of excitement in the subtle folktronica master’s largely super-chilled career. But even for the latter camp, there is a growing suspicion that he’s now best experienced live; this ninth album has the expansive, wandering pleasantness of a self-release unbothered by PR hurly-burly. What it doesn’t have is a great deal of tracks to pull you back, bar perhaps the insistent pulse and fluttering vocal samples of Scientists. The unremarkably housey SW9 9SL tries to up the stakes, but dreamy as the somnolent groove and sitar twinkle of Two Thousand and Seventeen and the nervily upbeat steel pan sounds of Lush are, there’s nothing with the jolting surprise of Kool FM from 2013’s jungle-flavoured Beautiful Rewind, and the album title feels, ultimately, misleading.