Rounds

1	Hands 5:41
2	She Moves She 4:41
3	First Thing 1:13
4	My Angel Rocks Back and Forth 5:07
5	Spirit Fingers 3:22
6	Unspoken 9:31
7	Chia 0:32
8	As Serious as Your Life 4:48
9	And They All Look Broken Hearted 5:09
10	Slow Jam 5:18

Barnes & Noble

Four Tet's electronic instrumentals fall somewhere between the post-Eno IDM ("intelligent dance music") of Aphex Twin or Autechre and the genre-splicing post-rock of Tortoise or Stereolab. In other words, these alternately busy and serene soundscapes have rhythm in their soul. Despite the suggestion of his chosen moniker, Four Tet is actually the work of one Kieran Hebden, who also plays in the British group Fridge. On Rounds, his third album as Four Tet, Hebden layers textures, both organic and synthetic, with an ear for melody. "My Angel Rocks Back and Forth" evolves slowly, its understated urgency recalling Portishead, as static-y sounds and gentle taps weave a rhythmic backdrop for tender, vaguely Eastern string pluckings. "She Moves She," on the other hand, begins with a funky breakbeat, before the surrounding space is populated with chiming bells, electronic interjections, and the track's recurring hook, also plucked out on a stringed instrument. With his simple beats, warm electronic textures, and artfully placed organic sounds, Hebden has conceived an album that -- like Boards of Canada's Music Has the Right to Children -- boasts enough smarts for the armchair electronica cognoscenti and enough melodic appeal to attract even casual fans. Lydia Vanderloo

All Music Guide

For his solo projects, Fridge's Kieran Hebden is a lo-fi experimentalist who, had he been recording 15 years ago, would've been cranking out songs on a four-track recorder instead of a laptop. As demonstrated on his third record, Rounds, he's one of the few musicians capturing all the promise inherent in computer science -- being able to summon, manipulate, and mix any sound imaginable. The record offers something to nearly every audience that could approach it, with a bit of a groove for electronic fans, an obtuse sense of music-making for experimentalists, and a dreamy melodicism sure to endear it to indie-pop fans. The opener, "Hands," is especially breathtaking; it begins with a few seconds of drum samples, surgically inserted and ill-timed, but opens into a warm, melodic production with a simple frame-kit beat outlining Hebden's guitar-and-keyboard atmospherics. "My Angel Rocks Back and Forth" features a music-box melody playing against softly shaded backmasked guitar and a subdued, grating percussion line reminiscent of an iron lung. The nine-minute "Unspoken" alternates guitar and piano playing the same beatific melody, over another simple beat and tambourine claps. Though Rounds is experimental by nature, Kieran Hebden's gift for melody and emotional shading allows his records to be enjoyed by an audience wider than merely experimental listeners. John Bush

Spin Magazine

Four Tet has rescued down-tempo electronica from solemn techies and wine-bar burnouts. (A-) Will Hermes

NME

Both innovative and friendly.... Few record sound this now, this timeless, this heartfelt, this side of Bjork at her best. (9) Tony Naylor

Blender

[Hebden] treats software as a rocky road to hummable compositions of seductively intricate invention. James Hunter