I say that, and then I listen to the end of the Tape Notes podcast, and Four Tet mentions he’s a total audiophile, like really into good sound systems and pressings and such 
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seriously why there’s coffee thread but not tea? love me some nice sencha ariake!
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I really liked the Tape Op interview.
He’s one of a tiny pool of artist that’s I’ve listened to consistently for almost 20 years. Most bands I just like a small percentage of their output but Four Tet has mostly kept me consistantly hooked.
His squidsop concert last year was glorious. The music, the lights, quad sound, oh my.
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Yeah he’s totally an audiophile.
The point he is making is that he focuses on the arrangement and vibe and once that’s sorted only then does he pay attention to the quality of the sounds.
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‘Tape Notes’
Haha, this is the day for remembering all titles wrongly.
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Love me some Four Tet! I got to see his Squid Soup live show last year in Los Angeles, truly astonishing both sonically and visually. The new album is a bit underwhelming, but still love the 4T!
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major influence. Still love pause and rounds era the most, but I also like a lot the more dance oriented stuff.
His music has gotten a bit samey but it‘s still super tasteful
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This is lovely in a manic way.
Tasteful is a great word. His more dance floor stuff never resorts to cliche but still carries weight.
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It’s not surprising he only uses presets and builds his tracks via large sample pools, where the recordings have meaning to his life. His music is full of humanity and emotion, it’s very approachable.
The the counterpoint to this is the gear list to Syro. It’s alien and un-approachable/unobtainable, yet the music is still full of humanity.
These are my 2 favorite artists
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Some of my favorite tracks:
- She Just Likes to Fight (the melodies and instrumentation are so beautiful. It sounds so personal, child like and nostalgic)
- LA Trance (the arrangement is my ideal of an electronic track)
- Locked (the steadily evolving groove that’s laid back and intense at the same time)
- This Unfolds (same as for Locked, but more playful and different sound aesthetic)
- Green (just so beautiful)
- She Moves She (the drums! These harsh cuts of the samples)
- Unspoken (the drums! The atmosphere!)
- Pyramid (the structure!)
- Jupiter (another one for structure, first introducing just the melodies, then the beat, then bringing both together and add some)
- Morning/Evening (can sit perfectly in the background or be listened to closely)
Should probably make a personal best off with an A and B side, coming to think of it. Would make an amazing LP.
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Couple of choice quotes from Tape Notes. I think this one might be worth subscribing to the TN Patreon for to see him work through stuff on screen.
On technical knowledge:
I think that’s much more useful than spending all your time being like, I’m just going to be learning what every single thing in Ableton does now for the next few months. Like, I’m going to go on an Ableton course, and then I’m going to go on a plugin course. And I’m going to read every Reddit ever about what everybody’s plugin chain is. And then you sit there and you know all this bizarre technical stuff. Create sounds that people already did on other records previously. There’s no real ideas. And no real ambition to create a piece of music. That sits within the canon of great music. You know, like… You’ve got to love music as a… Like, talk the catalog that already exists to be like, I want to be part of that. And I think that level of ambition. I’ve being like, I love all these records. I want to make something that can sit on a shelf alongside all of those things will serve you better than being like I want to be so good at Ableton.
On presets:
I basically I’ll get a sound. I’ll get the notes I want, and then I’ll get it up and running. On Omnisphere I’ll be like, all right, what are the bass sounds? And I’ll just cycle through loads and loads of them one after another until I find one that’s quite nice. So they’ve got this area. Synth Bass And the one I’ve used is called Plectra Sub. So “P”, I must have cycled through, they’re in alphabetical order, I must have cycled through hundreds before I chose that. But Yeah. The same notes will just play. And I’ll just choose a preset and that’ll be it. Yeah, like. I’m not doing any sound design type of stuff. Particularly on any of my things.I’ll get a synth. I’ll try all the presets out. Once I’ve used all the presets, I won’t think, all right, I should use the synth to create my own sounds. I’ll be right back let’s get a new synth. With new presets. And see what happens with that. Like, it could be anything, but, like… The main thing is to get the ideas going, but actually do the creative bit.
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Just got this recommended 
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Saw him in 2003ish maybe - opening for Radiohead on the Hail to the Thief tour I think it was? My brain a bit hazy but remember him playing the Rounds stuff up on the stage with just his laptop. Usually check his new stuff out depending on my mood - seems maybe less experimental nowadays.
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Started out with Fridge. Noodly, but not wankery.
Then picked up some of the stuff “the drummer from Fridge” did that was quite good. Jazz samples but without the lounge vibe. Really organic drum programming.
Read somewhere he used to manually place each drum sample. No grid, just until it sounded good to him. Wow.
“Pause”, while pretty, was a bit precious and slick for my tastes. His music has become even more polished since then. He’s undoubtedly talented but I haven’t felt the need to listen to any album since then more than once. However, I always do listen to every new release of his when it comes out, just to see what he is up to. It’s always good. Just not my cup of tea.
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At one point he‘s also like „I‘m definitely not the guy who’s starting from a pure sine wave“ and laughs, I laughed along with him.
It’s interesting how similar my approach and workflow is to his in some ways and how different it in others.
I also try to get some kind of arrangement and A/B parts with some nice stuff to fade in and out as quickly as possible when jamming. And then I need another half a year to make a track out of that. I also try to get something down that makes me feel stuff first and prioritize that over polishing things. Lastly, I‘m not afraid of tweaking presets for that matter, even though I enjoy sound design more and more. Unlike Four Tet however, my mix and arrangement will probably suck in the end .
But then he’s also this completely in the box working with a piano roll and pre recorded loops guy. I could never ever be creative this way, the way he describes dragging notes around until they fit with his mouse sounds like a nightmare to me. I guess he makes that work because he already has some kind of concept or idea before he sits down, while I let my hardware inspire me.
For Tits*.
“*” my spirit animal.
I’m the same way. Trying to imitate Four Tet’s expressiveness with samples was what really opened up the Digitakt for me after a while of banging my head against it. That’s an aspect of his music I’d love to hear in even more depth about in an interview…
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