Four Tet, "Everything Ecstatic Films & Part 2"

Once again a small collection of Four Tet music is packaged with a comprehensive all-inclusive DVD of Four Tet videos and once again the results are thorough enough to please everybody.
Domino

Everything Ecstatic Films is a collection of music videos for every song from 2005's Everything Ecstatic: some are homemade by Kieran Hebden's close friends, others are clearly professional.  The first one I saw last year was for the song "Smile Around the Face," which I continuously show at my music video night in Boston.  Only a small few Americans recognize the lead character—British actor Mark Heap, who I know as the offbeat oddball Brian from the fantastic TV comedy Spaced—as the camera is focused only on his head as it follows him from a shower, to a walk around town, and to various other places (even a little kid jumps on him at one point!). 

A lot of the other videos are less geared for an MTV-crowd but provide excellent visuals that could either backdrop Four Tet live performances or serve as excellent visuals at a music video night in a loud bar.  "A Joy," for example, is a stunning, colorful animation by Jodie Mack, while "High Fives," by Ed Holdsworth, has surreal animations with actual people, including Kieran sporting four eyes.  Other videos like "Sun Drums and Soil," by Jason Evans and "Fuji Check," by Kieran, himself, are of home video quality, but not displeasing at all, especially "You Were There With Me," which features uber sweetheart Kathryn Bint jumping in circles in various places all across the world!

The companion audio portion is Everything Ecstatic 2, an EP of previously unreleased recordings, including a 16 minute/16 second long version of "Turtle Turtle Up," originally only a brief piece on last year's Everything Ecstatic. "Sun Drums and Soil (Part 2)" includes a lot of elements from the first version but is more jazzed up.  "Watching Wavelength" and "Ending" aren't terribly memorable, while the highlight for me is the new song, "This Is Six Minutes," which doesn't sound like a toss-away or outtake, but a typical track in reliable Four Tet form: it's constructed entirely from samples of other music, however it's far more complex than most other Four Tet music, with multiple layers of guitars, drums, keyboards and marimba-like instruments, all weaved together to form an intricate audio tapestry.  

Together with the DVD/EP release of "My Angel Rocks Back and Forth," the entire music video collection of Four Tet can be obtained.  Once again I want to stress to all the industry professional bitching about lower sales of CDs: stop holding back.  Give people something special, like this, and the praise will follow.


samples:

• Turtle Turtle Up (extended)
• Sun Drums and Soil part 2
• This Is Six Minutes