The Future Is My Passion

Four Tet “Daydream Repeat”

The first 30 seconds of “Daydream Repeat” go by about as you’d expect from Four Tet, with percussive elements gradually clicking together into an up-tempo groove. Then the noise kicks in. It’s like a screaming vacuum, a massive blade scraping metal, a blast disintegrating everything in its path. It comes and goes through the track like a brutal storm, broken up by sections led by a piano part that sounds very gentle and innocent. The piano is lovely but it’s that digital noise that allures, this sound that’s not quite musical but carries some recognizable humanity to it. It’s like some disruptive furious feeling getting in the way of, but also giving weight to, the more level-headed moments.

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Nourished by Time “Hand On Me”

A very cool synth bass part drops around the 1:40 mark in this song, which retroactively makes the first half of it feel a little hesitant, as though Marcus Brown is biding time waiting for this inevitable groove to kick in. That synth bass changes the way everything else feels in the song – what felt a little off-balance feels less precarious, what felt empty feels full. Brown opens the song singing “Have you never loved somebody, I’ve never tried,” and once the song fills out and the groove is complete, it sounds like he’s finally feeling that love he’s denied himself.

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