Pink

Pink is a triumph and the new high-water mark for one of this generation's finest producers.

While Pink should not be conflated with a proper follow-up to There Is Love in You, even as a singles comp it suggests that the undergrad producer circa Rounds is now post-doctorate, and Four Tet is capable of going deeper and expanding higher than almost anyone else out there.

There is a roughness and a sense of surprise to these tracks completely lacking from many other Four Tet productions. [Oct 2012, p.62]

Despite the absence of percussion, it moves as steadily as a mountain stream, a reminder of the pulse connecting club music with a much vaster world beyond. Now, more than ever, we need the long view glimpsed through Pink's rose-tinted rave goggles.

This collection of 12" releases from the last year is breathtakingly beautiful. [Nov 2012, p.98]

It's confident work, with faith in the power of a few elements. [Oct 2012, p.79]

There's a sense that Pink is somehow serious, utilitarian, workmanlike, that while the tracks brought together here may work in isolation and on dancefloors, they're not as suited to indulgently solipsistic listening as previous Four Tet records.

Pink sits in between: not sonically and melodically rich enough to be digested with the bedroom fervour of, say, Rounds, but somehow not fully metamorphosed into whatever new form Hebden is pushing towards. Nobody's doubting the man's incredible skill as a producer, and the delicacy, intelligence and maturity of his ideas. But here, alchemy isn't quite achieved.

For the die-hard Four Tet fan who jumps over every release the man has put out, Pink isn't really going to offer much outside of a rather flash piece of packaging that coincidentally happens to store all of his recent tunes in one convenient place. For others though, it's simply going to be another Four Tet release, which is a lot better than a whole lot from everyone else.

It's an intermittently engaging set of ephemeral longevity, ultimately a little too nonspecific and slipshod to be considered alongside the rest of his full-length catalogue.