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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed albums.
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Everything Ecstatic
by Four Tet
Kieran Hebden's fourth Four Tet album dispenses somewhat with the "folk" portion of his folktronica sound, resulting in a more beat-driven effort.
| LABEL: |
Domino |
| RELEASE DATE: |
31 May 2005 |
| DISCS: |
1 disc |
| GENRE(S): |
Electronic |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Tiny Mix Tapes
This is an awesome, magnificent, incandescent, trailblazing record.
91
Village Voice (Consumer Guide)
The drums get busy at times, but never fear--this sounds more like Rounds than it does like anything else. Just a little funkier.
90
Junkmedia
When Pause came out in 2001, that sounded like an artist at his peak. But get this: He's still at his peak, and the view is no less scintillating, crisp, and sweet, rolling with drums and shaded by clouds of horn reverb and file-sharing swish.
90
Dot Music
"Everything Ecstatic" pulses with imagination and subtle talent, choosing to follow a sweet technicolour road rather than take a harder, and far well trodden path.
90
Delusions of Adequacy
Even at its most intense, Everything Ecstatic combines percussive aggression with warmth and vivid emotion.
90
Splendid
Like Madlib or MF DOOM, Four Tet is at the crest of the electronica/hip-hop wave, forcing the genre's evolution into new realms and making everyone else look like amateurs in the process.
90
Magnet
Emphasizes melodic intention in a manner that transcends electronica or the outer reaches of experimental hip hop. [#68, p.92]
85
Lost At Sea
It boasts the asset of versatility, possessing the buoyancy and charisma of a distinguishable party album whilst remaining resistant to the usual temptations associated with the so-called “lap-pop” tag.
80
The Onion (A.V. Club)
It's the sound of a music fiend obsessively pawing at his record collection and troubling over ways to pay it proper tribute.
80
New Musical Express
Hebden has recalibrated his sound to something darker and more rhythmic, without losing a note of melody. [21 May 2005, p.66]
80
The Guardian
There are more ideas in a few minutes of Everything Ecstatic than on most big dance producers' recent albums.
80
Uncut
Four Tet's epiphany is concerned entirely with the properties of sound itself. [Jun 2005, p.117]
80
Dusted Magazine
Even if it is hard at certain points to cut through the thick fog of psych drum riffs, Everything Ecstatic leaves ears ringing like a loud summer afternoon in the city – sun-drenched cacophony that doesn’t quite know where it’s going just yet.
80
Mojo
It's a noticeably urban record, an irritated rebuttal to the notion that dance music is dead. [Jun 2005, p.98]
80
musicOMH.com
An album of considerable depths, beauties and terrifying contrasts.
80
PopMatters
This is his best flowing album to date, his most demanding, most infuriating, most invigorating and most intense.
80
Prefix Magazine
It lacks the mind-blowing qualities that made Rounds the essential album in his catalogue, but Everything Ecstatic is another must-own from Four Tet, the most reliable of producers.
76
ShakingThrough.net
Everything Ecstatic doesn’t come together as solidly as prior Four Tet releases, but it unquestionably contains the blueprint for far greater explorations to come.
75
Spin
Sometimes Kieran Hebden's electronic music is dawn-over-the-Buddhist-shrine gorgeous. [Jun 2005, p.108]
74
Pitchfork
Everything Ecstatic marks his first slight step backward as a solo artist but it's hardly a failure.
70
Blender
This dense noise assault may not sustain the feeling of ecstasy from beginning to end, but its percolating trance rhythms... and captivating space experiments... connect on a visceral level that's rare in the cerebral world of electronic music. [Jun 2005, p.109]
70
Drowned In Sound
For the most part, Evertything Ecsatic succeeds, but occasionally Hebden strays from the path.
70
Q Magazine
Immediately satisfying. [Jun 2005, p.120]
70
The Wire
Hebden is a voracious consumer and producer of ideas, although there is sometimes the feeling, amid all this glut and gusto, that they're ideas for idea's sake. [#256, p.54]
70
All Music Guide
The left turn Hebden has taken into jumpy Krautrock with 2005's Everything Ecstatic will make listeners yearn for the clever, nuanced productions he turned in on Pause and Rounds.
67
Stylus Magazine
Everything Ecstatic provides an enjoyable listen, but it also sounds as much like a groping as a declaration.
65
Almost Cool
The album just doesn't have the innovation that previous albums from Hebden have shown.
62
cokemachineglow
It’s an intermittently interesting and somewhat forward looking work-in-process, but at the moment Hebden sounds like an underground hip-hop producer with a few ideas but no MC.
60
Urb
Ecstatic may not be the warm follow-up some people were expecting, but it's an equally fascinating, engaging album. [Jun 2005, p.78]
60
Rolling Stone
Hebden's lovingly arranged pet sounds cohere nicely when he jacks up his trip-hop-y beats.
60
Playlouder
The question is: do you actually need another disc like this, given that it doesn't quite have that sense of otherness that Boards of Canada have in spades, or that sound-as-texture that Aphex Twin utilised so sumptiously on 'Richard D James', or Amon Tobin's truly forward looking drum programming.
55
Neumu.net
His party peaks too early, though, with the gear soon settling into a middling middle, where the songs start to sound less distinct, and the changes start to become less pronounced, and interest starts to lag, and where, eventually, like a desperate host hoping to keep the party going, Hebden stacks on break after break in a gallant attempt to remind you that the disc is actually playing.
50
Under The Radar
Sadly lacks the emotion and, frankly, the catchiness of his previous release. [#10, p.111]
40
Alternative Press
There's nothing on Everything Ecstatic the likes of Madlib haven't already done better. [Jul 2005, p.186]
The average user rating for this album is 7.6 (out of 10) based on 18 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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