Kieran Hebden is, it has to be said, something of a genius. The groundwork for Pause was laid when Dialogue--his debut solo album under the guise of Four Tet--landed in 1999, an album that redrew the parameters of inventive dance music. A peculiar mix of live-sounding instrumental jazz and technologically super-precise laptop dance trickery, it sounded nothing like Hebden's actual group--the post-rockers Fridge--and, as it happened, very little like anything else in existence. Where Dialogue employed jazz sax and flute in its evocation of a 21st-century jazz meltdown, Pause goes even further, coiling whispers of harp and zither over layer-on-layers of fidgeting, rattling percussion. His inspirations? Well, like his friend and protégé:, Canadian tech-wizard Manitoba (whose Start Breaking My Heart is easily the equal of Pause), Hebden collects sounds and melodies from a dizzying array of places--ancient British folk music, the rattle of typewriter keys, the gurgle of running water, even a field recording of a children's playground. Genius? There really is no other word for it. --Louis Pattison
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