freekbeat

Four Tet's "Kool FM"  made me think I should give Kieran Hebden's stuff another "go"  (yes I'm a junglist-sentimentalist, if you hadn't noticed).

Stuff I heard in the early 2000s seemed pleasant, clever, not much more than that...  but people rave about the last two or three LPs. So I emusic-ed Pink and There Is Love In You, along with Late Night Tales,  KH's mix-CD.

Listening to the latter, I got about half way through and was surprised to hear wafting deliriously under and around the track ("Strange Ways" by Madvillainy) one of my all-time ab-fav psychedelic tunes:"Beeside" by Tintern Abbey. Seemingly unconnected to the track itself, like this gaseous emanation seeping across from another dimension. Checked "Strange Ways" on YouTube but not a trace of Tintern Abbey audible.

Aha, turns out it's a remix by one Koushik  of Stone's Throw label, that's what's used by KH, not the original.  In this megamix it comes in about at 4.50 ...

here's the source

and a longer version

another sweet jam from Koushik -- reminds me a bit of Avalanches

Four Tet's own recent work? Pleasant, clever, inventive. Did strike me still as a bit too amalgamative to be astounding. Perhaps hidden depths will reveal on future plays. But did instantly dig this tune though:

I think of KH as the archetypal Invisible Jukebox artist. It's almost a genre. Such exquisite, wide-ranging taste....  A lot of interesting things to say about the things played. A lot of connections made, genealogies traced....

But the influence-palette never strays anywhere near cheese, close to the plebeian. The feral.

It's still the Good Music Society.

Well, it's very similar to Tortoise... "we know what's good". Is that enough, though? To colour in the spaces between the lines you've drawn, or perceived, that criss-cross between Terry Riley and Theo Parrish,  Terry Callier and Maurizio.....

I suppose that was always going to be the fault-line, the danger, with the post-rock project.

If you're unrocking rock, then you're not going to gravitate to the things in the genres you're now being inspired by (hip hop, house, techno, Jamaica, etc) that are slamming. That also, in their own way, rock. 

So is this an anomaly?

Not really, because A/ it doesn't really slam, it falls a little short of the full rinse  B/ doing a jungle homage in 2013 is like Tortoise or the Orb in the early Nineties homaging dub,  nigh-on two decades ago bizniz.  C/ jungle entered the Soul Jazz / Steve Barker canon several years back.

Do a track called "Beatport" and you'd really be shaking things up...