Riding the train has always been my favorite mode of transportation–a way of rolling through the world, watching different kinds of scenery pass me by in a smooth, uninterrupted rhythm. Perhaps my favorite time to take the train is in the months of winter, after it’s rained in the Bay Area for a few weeks. During this season, the rolling hills that pass me by as I ride the train from San Francisco to my hometown have taken on a lush green color, dotted with trees and houses, teeming with life before they turn back into an arid brown for most of the year.
On these hour-long rides, I’m usually listening to some kind of music, and usually at a high volume to block out the screeching sounds that unfortunately de-romanticize taking the train in the Bay Area. I try to very intentionally choose music that will accompany the scenery I’m watching during these rides, both inside and outside of the train: the people that are all traveling somewhere to carry out their own objectives, as well as the rolling hills and parking lots and suburban sprawl that fly by me. Probably pretentious, but it makes the one hour pass by a lot quicker. For this ride, I chose to listen to electronic producer and savant, Four Tet.
Listen: Four Tet – Rounds
Electronic music has always been one of my favorite genres, but not one that I listen to much outside of solitude. It’s hard for me to explain to my friends why I love electronic music, and as a result, it’s hard for me to listen to it with them. I want to be able to explain why I listen to the music that I do and it’s something I can do reasonably well with a lot of my other favorite genres, but not one that I’ve been able to do for electronic music (and partly why this blog post exists).
At a glance, electronic music can often be thought of as “cold” or “less human” because of the very nature of the genre: made with computers, digital, synthesized, no instruments, often no vocals, etcetera. And certainly, there are producers who make cold electronic music; they create sounds that feel distant and other-worldly, alien and unfamiliar. There’s a lot to be said about this kind of music and the feelings that it can evoke. But for me, I’ve always been attracted to electronic music that evokes warmth and a distinctly human touch. I can’t think of someone who does this better than Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet, especially on his breakout third album, Rounds.
On my most recent train ride back to my hometown, I decided to listen to Rounds. I’d known it was his breakout album but didn’t necessarily feel it was his best. I loved Morning / Evening, with its use of Indian singer Lata Mangeshkar in a beautiful, looping serenity. And then there was 2017’s New Energy, which felt like a bright, uplifting statement in a time when there was little positivity to be found in the world. But I think I hadn’t given Rounds a proper chance, and often, music will click for me when I listen to it in different contexts. The midday train ride turned out to be the perfect environment for me to fully appreciate this album.
The album starts with “Hands” and a heartbeat; specifically, a dog’s heartbeat, hinting at the life that is overflowing on this album. Slowly, the heartbeat fades away into a rolling drum beat and sparkling synths, reminding me of the way a jazz player might brush their cymbals and improvise at breakneck speed. The song blossoms into a pitter-patter beat with beautiful piano chords flitting in and out; the punchy drums propelling the song forward much as the train I was on was propelled forward throughout the Bay Area. Something about this song felt so human; the undeniable texture, the jazz-like drums, even the electronic, glitchy flourishes that floated around the synths.
This human feeling was what captivated me about the album on this train ride. To the left of me on the train was a couple, with what I assumed was their daughter (no older than 10) on the seat behind them, curled up on her side. As “Hands” faded into “She Moves She”, with its twinkling glockenspiel and distant gongs, the sun hit the windows at just the right angle. The golden hour rays flooded the train, and the daughter sat up, stood on her seat, got her parents’ attention, and pointed out the window. I couldn’t hear what she was saying; the track pushed forward, with glitchy splashes of sound careening freely around the song. I could only assume she was as awestruck as I was.
On a January morning earlier this year, news reports of Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gianna, as well as seven other passengers dying in a helicopter crash started to break. It was a surreal headline to read, and one that sat with me throughout the day as I tried to digest it. More than any other celebrity death that I’ve heard about or lived through, this one seemed to hit different; maybe it was the suddenness of it, or because Kobe Bryant was the first athlete I really knew about, or just the tremendous outpouring of grief and support that showed up on my various social media feeds. The tragedy was palpable in the air that day, and the profound impact that he had on so many of my peers’ lives and my own life was strongly felt.
In moments like these, I turn to music that makes me feel reaffirmed about human life and how lucky we are to experience it, and how quickly it can be taken away from us. Rounds and its inherent sense of humanity do this for me. “My Angel Rocks Back And Forth” opens with a mechanical, fuzzy drum beat before a sparkly harp line comes in. The harp comes and goes, but what remains constant is the march-like drums. Moments of beauty, surrounded by an insistence to keep going. The emotional heft of this song helped me reckon with the tragic news that hung over that day like a dark cloud.
Perhaps the musical centerpiece of the album is “Unspoken”, at nearly ten minutes long. Strange field recordings start off the track, and build and build, laid atop a beautifully simple piano melody that carries the track. A tambourine shakes every eight beats or so, and what sounds like a can being dragged along the road comes into the mix. The drums pick up in intensity, and the piano goes away, leaving reversed and slowed-down synths to create an incredibly textured song. A reverby guitar plays the same familiar piano melody. The field recordings and noise picks up, with unfamiliar sounds and samples creating a perfect storm in the middle of the song. A sax adds to the cacophony, and more and more sounds build atop this wall of music before they fall away, back to the gentle, homeward-looking piano melody. The noises return, but they don’t distract me from that melody that has grown all too familiar in the nine minutes of this track.
The first time you hear distinguishable vocals on the album is on the album closer, “Slow Jam”, and that too for barely a second. The song is drenched in melancholy, with bursts of phone call-esque static and looping guitars and solemn piano. A squeaky toy sound inexplicably comes in halfway through the track, but for some reason, it works and fits within this song perfectly. The train ride allowed me to fully take in Rounds and what made it special: its textured soundscapes, beautiful samples, propulsive drum beats all add up to make an album that feels amazingly personal and intimate. I can’t pretend to know much about freeform jazz, but it feels like the electronic version of that kind of spirit.
The news of Kobe’s death was tough for me and countless others. Listening to Rounds when it happened helped me reconcile with what happened as well as fully understand why I felt such a tremendous loss. Four Tet plays with sounds and melodies in a way that reminds me of human life with its ups and downs and unpredictability and fragility, and for that, Rounds will forever live on, just as the heartbeat in the first track will always thrum along.