Friday 03/06/05 Four Tet, Battles @ Picture House, Hebden Bridge

How four New York guys with very cool CV’s have ended up in this sleepy Pennines town is a mystery. From CBGB’s and The Knitting Factory to Hebden Bridge Picture House must seem like an extremely long way for Battles, but perhaps a break from ultra-hip NYC audiences is just what they need. Certainly the level of energy and commitment they display is staggering; there are no half measures on display tonight. Battles’ sound is edgy funk shot through with precision math-rock dynamics, always teetering on the edge of abstraction. Tracks are not so much played as built before our eyes, as looped fragments mesh together to form irresistible grooves, held together by astounding drummer John Stanier (moonlighting from hard-rock outfit Tomahawk). There is a marked African influence: the tiny melodic loops of guitar and high register keyboard created by Ian Williams, Tyondai Braxton and David Konopka bring to mind the repeated patterns of Nigeria’s Fela Kuti or the ‘Congotronics’ of Konono No. 1. Elsewhere, a touch of Talking Heads circa 'Fear Of Music' brings the sphere of influence circuitously back to NYC. Powerful, hypnotic stuff which remains just the right side of avant-garde.

Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet, runs a similarly fine line between cerebral and corporeal. Once christened folktronica by the label-happy music press, Hebden has taken his music into pastures new with his most recent album, the percussion-heavy 'Everything Ecstatic', and tonight’s performance highlights this direction. There are abstract passages, but for the most part the show is dancefloor friendly, energetic and heavily rhythmic. Hebden has talked publicly about his love for the spiritual jazz created in the 60’s by players like Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane. Clearly his new music is an attempt to create a modern form of this transcendent, ecstatic form, as made explicit in the album title. He does this by sampling longer, looser breaks than his laptop peers, creating drum patterns which weave together in a more fluid, live-sounding manner. Over this he sprinkles fragments of melody, and clearly he has learned a little showmanship from stadium-rocking beat-merchants like The Chemical Brothers. The bursts of static which herald the arrival of “She Moves She” is a classic anticipatory strategy, whilst the way he teases the audience with the melody in 'Smile Around The Face' is pure Orbital. The resulting collision is a joyous mixture of rave energy and free jazz spirituality.