by RAF KATIGBAK | More Jazz Festival: Nicolas Repac » Paul Anka » Ramachandra Borcar

“Everyone in the press is so down on dance music,” claims Kieren Hebden, “they’re all ‘rock bands are cool again, blah blah...’ Electronic music has been getting a lot of bad press.”

Over the phone from a studio in London, England, the 27-year-old British producer also known as Four Tet explains how he’s felt the need to rep electronica simply because nobody else seems to be doing it. “Lots of electronic music has become too introspective, it’s been about hiding away and listening to it on your own. I thought it was important to make a really confident record.”

Enter Everything Ecstatic, the fourth album by Hebden and by far his most exuberant. After locking down the bleary-eyed and intimate bedroom acoustic/electronic sound on his previous effort Rounds, Hebden has shaken off the sleepy folktronica tag in favour of a triumphant and wildly raw and rough-around-the-edges sound that mashes together hip hop, ambient, psych and krautrock on one sure-footed album. “I wanted to make an album that said, ‘I make electronic music and this is what it’s about—everyone play it loud in the streets and go crazy and have fun!’” When the Mirror recently caught up with Hebden, he was eager to chat about inspiration, sampling and how rock bands can suck.

Mirror: Why do you feel the need to rep electronic music? Is it a PLUR thing?

Kieren Hebden: I’m actually too young to have caught the whole rave thing. It’s more a tradition of being passionate about the new. Miles Davis and Sun Ra were people who embraced the future and always moved forward with their music. It wasn’t about nostalgia or recreating the past, it’s about coming up with new ideas and exploring the possibilities within their music. It’s like what I said about rock bands—there are some fantastic rock bands out there, but for a lot of them, it’s about recreating the past and putting their past idols up on a pedestal and making carbon copies. That’s the stuff that really frustrates me—if I want to listen to the Rolling Stones, I’ll listen to the Rolling Stones.

M: Sampling is a big part of what you do, so nostalgia must play some role.

KH: That’s the great thing we learned from sampling in hip hop—you have to take things from the past and destroy them and make something new out of them. Being inspired, influenced and even stealing from the past is fine. It’s when you see the past as being sacred and stop wanting to go beyond it. I think it’s much more flattering to James Brown if you loop up a bit of one of his records and make something new out of it than to put together some sort of shit funk band and try and do a lame cover of his tracks. The real innovators of music never intended for people to take their ideas and recreate them. I think they hoped people would be inspired by their ideas and move forward.

With Akufen at Club Soda on Friday, July 8, midnight, $17.50

>> Music Listings