“Ringer sees Four Tet play with electronic grooves straight from the manuals of Klaus Schultze and Manuel Gottsching, but gives these grooves additional oomph and chutzpah.”
“Ringer sees Four Tet play with electronic grooves straight from the manuals of Klaus Schultze and Manuel Gottsching, but gives these grooves additional oomph and chutzpah.”
Four Tet – Ringer
http://www.municrecords.com/ http://www.dominorecordco.com/
A brilliant, if all too short release (fair play, it’s listed as a mini LP); Ringer sees Four Tet play with electronic grooves straight from the manuals of Klaus Schultze and Manuel Gottsching, but gives these grooves additional oomph and chutzpah. The opener Ringer is how I always imagined spaceships to sound like once they were airborne: its plinky-plonky rhythm builds slowly, eventually adding a naïve circular melody that is bloody familiar (the Orb? something off the TransEurope/TransAmerican Express compilations?).
Still, it’s great stuff and a comparative form of hell breaks loose near the end. Ribbons, the shortest track at a mere 5 minutes is a gentler affair; in essence a bubbly synth tries to make friends with a nervy drum pattern and on the whole succeeds. Next up we have Swimmer which seems (by virtue of the ever-present, never-changing atonal synth note) to inhabit a very static world indeed. Even the addition of train-like beats can’t shift this sense of stasis. Wing Body Wing allows a simple melody to hold hands with a fragmented beat. It’s a wee bit new age and reminds me a bit of Julian Cope’s Rite Squared or a Holger Czukay release like Rome Remains Rome. The odd grating Faust-style noise can’t deflect it from its path.
A charming listen.
Words: Richard Foster