Four Tet has delivered a Christmas miracle or surprise or extra work or whatever you want to call it. He has released two new albums Parallel and 871. He released his album Seventeen Oceans right back at the beginning of the pandemic in March, but has seemingly been quite busy, dropping another 30 tracks today without much warning at all.
Parallel is only 10 songs, but kicks off with a mammoth 27-minute, droning ambient track that helps set the table for the record. It then settles in for the rich ambient and melodic house music that Four Tet is known for, sometimes swelling with bigger melodic strokes, supporting by percussion and other times remaining calm as birds floating in the breeze. Parallel is available on Bandcamp and to stream below.
871 is a bit more psychedelic and abstract, splitting the album into 20 different songs. Some of the tracks are less then a minute long and help the record transition sonically, while others are around five minute that builds around guitars, walls of noise and ambient textures. It gets weirder as the LP moves along. In the beginning, some of the short pieces even sound like instrumentals from late Zeppelin Coda type of stuff. 871 isn’t on streaming services yet, but get it on Bandcamp now.
