- A welcome reissue of Four Tet's old post-rock band that highlights the comfort they felt together, effortlessly making experimental and often beautiful compositions.
- "The early music you make has got a naivety to it that you will never ever get back," Kieran Hebden told The Wire in 2004. He was talking about Fridge, the band that he, Aden Ilhan and Sam Jeffers started in 1996 as teenagers. Prior to their formation, Hebden had seen the American band Tortoise perform live and was stunned. "The way I saw [post-rock], it was an ideology, not a sound," he said. "You could make music where the sky was the limit—any lineup was possible, any instrumentation was allowed, any length of song was allowed." And so across multiple albums and EPs, the trio crafted their own take on the nebulous genre, constructing instrumental pieces informed by jazz and krautrock, dance music and glitch.
Fridge's first records had a precocious ambition, one where a clamorous post-hardcore jam ("Cassette") could lead into seven minutes of mutated downtempo ("Furniture Boy"). Their enthusiasm was matched by a prolific run. So it wasn't surprising that a compilation, Sevens And Twelves, materialized only two years into their career. That two-disc set served as a capstone to their early explorations, and it was with their third record, 1999's Eph, that everything began to gel. They were honing their craft, coherently merging their styles into a shimmering vision of jazzy electronica. Then Happiness arrived. Released on Hebden's own Text Records in 2001, it would become the group's magnum opus. And now more than 20 years later it has been remastered from the original tapes, offering a new look at its imaginative spirit.
Before even pressing play, it's clear that Fridge were opting for transparency this time around: the tracks on Happiness are named after the sounds and instruments we'll hear. "Harmonics" is a breezy reverie that recalls Penguin Cafe Orchestra, and it's built on little more than the titular vibrations. "Drums Bass Sonics & Edits" is more rugged, taking shape as a longform jam session that's decorated with repetitive blips and glitches. The tracks on Happiness are looser than what Hebden was making around this time as Four Tet. Pause—released the same year—saw him packaging kaleidoscopic rhythms into tight arrangements, heavily utilizing electronic production along the way. If there was a thin line between post-rock and folktronica, it was only because Hebden was straddling both camps with ease.
The track titles on Happiness work at a level beyond mere description, too. Take the opener "Melodica & Trombone," whose two instruments conjure up arresting Talk Talk atmospherics. It's a reminder of how any instrument—or combination of instruments—can lead to heavenly sonics. When it concludes with two minutes of field recordings, the transformation of familiar noises, water and wind, to an austere drone only proves that nature, too, is capable of shapeshifting. It's a good indicator of what separates this album from an early Four Tet LP. These songs have the semblance of the band members tinkering, of seeing what can work. It makes sense that "Sample & Clicks", for example, is here instead of Pause. It's far less sentimental.
Happiness is surprisingly consistent in tone despite its variation. "Drum Machines & Glockenspiel" sets insistent pounding against twinkly metallophones, and it's grounded by Ilhan's bassline, which burrows into the mix and adds a wobbly groove. There's a similar feel across "Five Four Child Voice," despite its contemplative instrumentation. Notably, it features the sound of children, channeling the nostalgic summers of yesteryear. Such guileless bliss is even more expertly showcased on "Cut Up Piano & Xylophone," the album's most hypnotic track. In under three minutes, loops and edits flicker in a sort of chopped-up minimalism, creating dreamy textures that feel like the sonic equivalent of Claudio Caldini's Offering.
In hindsight, Happiness is a useful signpost for the end of post-rock's golden era. The charming sway of "Long Singing," for example, is only so far removed from the crescendoing epics that Explosions In The Sky brought to TV audiences soon after. But it's important to recognize that Fridge was never avoiding experimentation. "I think there's nothing more magical," Hebden told 3D World in 2011, "when someone makes something that is truly experimental and truly kind of natural and human at the same time." That humanness comes in on the nostalgic bonus track "Five Combs," or the drifting "Tone Guitar & Drum Noise." In both tracks, it just sounds like three friends trying to capture something magical.
Tracklist01. Melodica & Trombone
02. Drum Machines & Glockenspiel
03. Cut Up Piano & Xylophone
04. Tone Guitar & Drum Noise
05. Five Four Child Voice
06. Sample & Clicks
07. Drums Bass Sonics & Edits
08. Harmonics
09. Long Singing
10. Five Combs (Bonus Track)