Even if the work it's rendered hasn't always been remarkable, Kieran Hebden's path over the past three years warrants respect. In late 2004, Hebden-- as Four Tet-- finished his fourth LP, Everything Ecstatic, and released it the next year to wide acclaim. He'd become one of the few home-listening electronic musicians to find substantial popularity within the indie mainstream, but he didn't rest on his laurels. Instead, he got to work, producing an album by New England improvisers Sunburned Hand of the Man (out later this year) and devoting his talents to work with 63-year-old jazz/soul/rock drummer Steve Reid.
Reid and Hebden went into the studio in March 2005, four days after first playing together, and emerged with two albums, The Exchange Session Vol. 1 and 2. Those sessions were all free, long-form improvisation, and-- as fascinating as Hebden and Reid could be sonically-- they certainly had their foibles as a nebulous duo. Hebden was playfully temperamental, his impatience causing him to jump the gun and storm the tape with sounds that didn't need to be there. It felt as though the then 25-year-old Hebden was still trying to learn to listen and respond. But Reid wasn't in a rush: Over the past four decades, he's played with James Brown, Fela Kuti, and Miles Davis, and The Exchange Sessions still found him fond of big, shifty grooves led with his sticky, trademark kick drum. The duo was strides better on Spirit Walk, recorded with a nonet for Soul Jazz in 2005. Hebden was improvising around people, hiding under a saxophone and reappearing alongside Reid's beat. Reid was a confident, ambitious bandleader. It worked.
But Hebden and Reid return to duo work for Tongues, their pop album: In conversation, Hebden mentions that, in exploring his relationship with Reid, he became fascinated with Reid's interests, abilities and experiences in pop and rock. Reid, after all, played on Martha and the Vandella's 1964 hit "Dancing in the Streets". For Tongues, the duo puts temporal and thematic limits on its improvisations. Hebden introduced a pre-arranged melodic idea, and he and Reid improvised for approximately five minutes around each theme.
Unfortunately, these restrictions cut the duo no favors. The very fundamental differences that marred The Exchange Sessions are more apparent for the Tongues concentrate: Reid is still older and wiser, and he acts like they have all of the time in the world here. His variations over Hebden's scrambled baritone sax samples for "People Be Happy" essentially involve adding cymbals to a tom-and-kick beat. He's equally metronomic on opener and single "The Sun Never Sets", refusing to step aside from his groove at all. Hebden, much the same hasty improviser as he was during The Exchange Sessions, tries to compensate. During the last minute of "The Sun Never Sets," he smothers the melody with spirals of noise, forcing Reid out of the pocket and into an unnatural finish. He's directing the workflow, even when it doesn't need any help, forcing things into early exits through cacophonous finishes. Hebden goes wild to end most tracks, mistaking noisy washes for climaxes and cleansing.
But that's only a symptom: The underlying problem here seems to be that Hebden still isn't comfortable in his own skin while improvising, with Reid or otherwise. Reid has called Hebden his musical soulmate, and that sounds like it could be true. But their relationship is still just young and promising. That's audible in the missteps on Tongues. Hebden issues retractions several times, as on the danceable "Brain". Otherwise one of the best tracks here, Hebden teases Reid's rhythm with flat electronic hums two minutes in, but-- after two tries-- he can't get it right. He throws the idea to the wind, eclipsing the rest of the track with a five-second sustain of the same tone, eventually breaking it and the track apart. Reid follows perfectly, but he shouldn't have to so early into the take.
Sure, improvising doesn't require finding a course and sticking to it, but-- given a time limit for working around finite themes-- admissions of error sound like inexperience, immaturity, and a lack of confidence converging. Hebden's trying, and that's venerable enough. But, eventually, he's going to have to have to treat his improvisational undertakings like it's more than something he's doing to buck his own trends.
