We walked into the main hall of Alexandra Palace to a web of 42,000 hanging lights loosely hanging in the darkness, with a swarm of people shuffling underneath them and a DJ booth set up in the middle of the room. We squeezed through the crowds to immerse ourselves properly in the set, and it wasn't long before it began. As the first few sound effects begin to take shape in the form of 'Planet' the lights start to flicker in unison in a very 'New Energy' blue. Once the main plucked-string melody comes in, patterns start to shift across the crowd to many oohs and ahs. The underbeat from 'Only Human' already starts to feature in the set here, building anticipation for later... It really is magical, and already I clocked that it really didn't matter what angle you had in the room, everyone had the same experience. That's really, really difficult to achieve with any kind of performance, and the unity you feel with everyone else is special. I think it reflects Four Tet's outlook on music in general, that there's no form of hierarchy and accessibility is key. His all-night sets are usually still about 8 quid no matter how big he's gotten, and although tickets for this were more expensive (it's too big production for that ticket price) you still see the same message put across. It's already wonderful, and as samples from 'Ba Teaches Yoga' bounce around the room, I had a feeling I knew what was coming. After a minute or two, the instantly recognisable hook of 'Two Thousand and Seventeen' blasted out of the speakers, the entire room lit up bright white; overwhelmingly gas. As colours and patterns float tenderly around you, you're just taken on this journey with the music, not in the traditional high pace of a lot of live music, but drifting softly through the story told in the ambient tones.
Pace lifts slightly into 'Ocoras'; I love the droning bassline in this and it was an important moment of tension building as he started, bit by bit, to fully drop in 'Only Human'. The next five minutes are just unbelievable. First of all, the song bangs live, there's no denying it. The lights pulsed a vivid purple in expanding spherical shapes, and the drop was so heavy the crowd that was just silently mesmerised was jumping all over the place. Singing along to the Nelly Furtado sample and swinging the hanging lights round and round, everyone was having such a sick time. Just as you'd think the song would draw to a close, Kieran mixes in 'Lush' with its rolling melody repeating again and again, syncing perfectly with the beat to 'Only Human'. The vocals come back in again and it's two tracks I would never have expected to sync so brilliantly. It takes the dancefloor classic feel of the first song and adds Four Tet's usual cosmic twist, and as huge concentric circles drip down from the ceiling like a lava lamp, you're lifted further and further into this world he's creating. Then we move into 'Kool FM', and he utilises the stop and start nature of the song to create shining white blasts of sudden light in striding, powerful lines up, down and across the room, constantly demanding your attention with each 'hey hey hey'. I noticed at this point that some features of 'Only Human' were still echoing their way across the room. This is maybe 30 minutes into the set and he has managed to feature it subtly the entire time, the unity, the creativity in this blew my mind. What a genius.
Visually, we took a further step with the next song. Giving us some of 'Rounds', 'Spirit Fingers' was the fastest pace moment of the set, with tense melodies and the use of the Amen Break sample underneath, quickest BPM we saw, and for the first time the fairy lights took on multiple colours at once. It's cheesy, but I wrote a note at this point that the lights are like rapid fireflies of emotions darting across my vision. The transition was so beautiful, and light and sound were so well connected that the feelings being communicated were so vivid. 'LA Trance' comes on, and the warm, intermittent beeps, like some sort of space station emitting signals, fit the lights just as well as the chimes and plucked strings we've heard earlier. 'SW9 9SL' provides further ambience. At this point I moved to the back of the crowd so that I could look at the set as a whole, standing behind the cube formed by the lights and watching from an outside perspective. It doesn't have the same immersive feel, obviously, but it reminded me of watching shooting stars on the canvas of the black sky. He played 'Locked' next - similar vibes with high pitched melodies soaring over the top of the vibrating bass, which then built into a section of intense, industrial crashes. The lights were literally going mental, and all peace in the music at one point was completely lost; a storm of sound was shaking the walls of the palace. Just as your wrapped up in the chaos of it all, silence falls, darkness fills the room. You take a moment to breathe, and 'Teenage Birdsong' suddenly explodes from the speakers. The lights shine out, the crowd loses it, you get the idea. It's such a peng way to create a contrast between the expectation for him to play his most recent release and the way he handles it.
At this point, I thought it had come to a close, Kieran was taking applause from the crowd and we were all already blown away. I started to hear something murmur out of the speakers, and as I recognised the laid back kick beat I was legit thinking 'surely it can't be' but as the vocal sample crescendo'd, it became clear he was rounding it off with 'Daughter'. It's an absolute favourite of mine from 'New Energy', with its serenity and simplicity, I've listened to it hundreds of times and hearing it live was an absolute blessing. The lights shone a warm yellow, gently illuminating people's smiling faces in the crowd, and it brought such a sense of resolve to the set. As the outro of calming arpeggios sung out, I genuinely felt lucky I'd had to chance to witness that set.
Four Tet is groundbreaking in terms of what live electronic music can be, can mean, can make people understand. It was 100% a performance, and seeing how proud he is of these two shows at Alexandra Palace on social media since makes me so happy. The melodies of his music are often atonal and angular, but there was nothing dissonant in the way that performance made you feel. His music has certainly changed my life, and the way he understands sound is constantly inspiring to me, from moments such as the combination of 'Only Human' and 'Lush', to the vision of the lighting itself. I've seen how intricately he can build a set for multiple different settings, but seeing his pure live show was the most incredible yet. In any case, I'm excited to see how this calibre of performance will inspire other musicians to come up with new and more inventive ideas, and I'm sure we're only seeing the beginning of what could be possible. I took some pictures on film and iPhone, and also some videos, although unfortunately they're not great quality. Sorry there was such a delay between posts by the way, I'm hoping my next one will be up much sooner. xxx
