Four Tet

As Four Tet, laptop composer Kieran Hebden intersperses delicate, heart-rending guitar
melodies with glitchy percussive skips and stutters. "My Angel Rocks Back and Forth" twirls
with a music-box melody, interrupted by what sounds like a tonearm dragging across a
turntable platter. Rounds is almost accidentally poignant -- it's like hearing shattered
transmissions of sentimental old music. PAT BLASHILL (From RS 922, May 15, 2003)

Charming, civilized, childish, Kieran Hebden imagines an aural space in which electronic malfunction is cute rather than annoying or ominous. Keys and strings go their own merry way toward the same pretty, toylike goal, and though the drums grumble sometimes, they can be counted on to help their friends the glitches in a pinch. The computer as music box--which is what guys like Hebden think it is, after all. (Grade: A-)