Sometimes, a producer’s best strategy is to get out of the way and let other people radiate. That’s the lesson that Kieran Hebden, a.k.a. cerebral electronic stalwart Four Tet, seems to have taken to heart on 41 Longfield Street Late ’80s, his sonically discreet but emotionally robust album with Nashville guitarist William Tyler.
Hebden’s recent trajectory has seen him climb ever further up electronic music’s greased pole, to a level where he’s headlining Coachella alongside Skrillex and Fred again… Hebden hasn’t succumbed to the EDM bug, but his recent solo records have suffered from a certain torpor, sounding almost formulaically Four Tet. The contrast with the restless innovator of Hebden’s youth, moving from the elegant post-rock of Fridge to the dazzling, folk-influenced Rounds in just a few years, is conspicuous. That his work with Tyler should sound so unlike any other Four Tet records in recent memory is a welcome surprise.
41 Longfield Street Late ’80s, named after the house in South-West London where Hedben once absorbed his father’s collection of American country and folk music, is the polar opposite of stadium-filling dance music. Both Tyler and Hebden are serial collaborators: Hebden has worked with everyone from Burial to Ellie Goulding, while Tyler counts pedal-steel guitarist Luke Schneider and post-ambient experimentalist claire rousay among recent colleagues. Yet there is something genuinely special about this partnership, which Tyler has described in terms of enduring friendship, parallel teenage experiences, and the influence of their fathers’ record collections.
Hebden apparently had the final say on the album’s sound; Tyler has said that he was “kind of surprised when I ended up hearing the finished thing.” But Tyler’s guitars dominate throughout, as if Hebden is reveling in the intricate melodic brilliance of his collaborator. The opening track, an exquisitely elongated cover of Lyle Lovett’s “If I Had a Boat,” could pretty much be a solo Tyler song for its opening minutes, with the guitarist’s finely picked riffing pushed to the fore and the electronics limited to eerie ambient noises in the background.
It’s a bold move—but it is also the right one, showcasing Tyler’s beautifully clean fingerpicking style. When Hebden does eventually make his presence known, via a series of electronic oscillations whose stately elegance slowly comes apart at the seams, the electroacoustic handover is perfectly balanced, a serene transition between worlds.
At times like these—or on the Pink Floyd–Americana cosmic guitar duel of “When It Rains”—Tyler’s collaboration with one of the foremost electronic music producers of his generation sounds considerably less produced than the guitarist’s own recent solo album, Time Indefinite, which made heavy use of field recordings and collage.
