Four Tet responds to notion of ‘Finally Getting the Deserved Success’ with Skrillex and Fred Again..

Embracing a different view on the Electronic Music Industry: Four Tet Questions Notion of “Finally Getting the Deserved Success” with Skrillex and Fred Again..

In a recent interview with The Guardian, Four Tet questions the claim that “he’s finally getting the success he deserves” after his career began to take off even more after his performances with Skrillex and Fred Again.. in the past few months. There is no anger between the team behind the statement, it is simply a discussion of the difficulties of the music industry, although the understanding of it goes back a little further.

Last summer, perhaps the most dynamic trio of recent times formed in a rented house on the river in Pangbourne, England. One member of the trio is Skrillex, aka Sonny John Moore, an American music producer and singer-songwriter, another is Frederick John Philip Gibson, professionally known as Fred Again, an English record producer and DJ, and the third is Kieran Hebden, a British electronic musician known as Four Tet. Although their band is said to be very strong together, as they are involved in countless gigs, what they have in common, which is the most interesting point, is that all three of them built their own careers and then joined a band. So there’s no question that together they form a very popular and innovative team, with a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden in New York this February and later, a highly acclaimed set closing Coachella for 100,000 festival-goers.

“That concept was coming at me after Coachella – ‘He’s finally getting the success he deserves’ – but it didn’t really feel like that”, added Kieran.

According to the interviewer, the above quote was said by Four Tet while seeing him through the video call with exhaustion and his eyes circled by late-night rings. “I did Coachella and the next gig was a three-and-a-half-hour set at my daughter’s 13th birthday party to 20 teenage girls, who I felt looked at me deeply unimpressed the whole time”, commented Kieran. According to Hebden, his musical partnerships, his anti-sponsorship stance and his close career association are all part of protecting his credibility. He seems to really enjoy what he does, but in his own words, his musical partnerships, anti-sponsorship stance, and close career association are all about protecting Four Tet’s credibility – which certainly determines where and how many people he likes to perform in front of. “From where I’m sitting, dance music is so massive right now, on a worldwide scale”, says Hebden. Four Tet enthusiastically shares his wild-eyed enthusiasm while talking about his legal conflict with Domino. The significant risks associated with the case had the potential to engulf him completely. He wasn’t merely challenging Domino, but rather, he was confronting the entire overarching framework of record labels. The disagreement revolved around the method for determining streaming royalties in contracts that were established prior to the emergence of streaming platforms. Since Domino’s stance represented the norm within the industry, if Hebden achieved victory in the courtroom and established a new legal precedent, it would send shockwaves through labels worldwide.

In conclusion, it’s no wonder that with this anti-snobbery mindset, he was able to reach a new audience and build a large fan base. Surely his legacy shows that no matter how successful someone is in the music industry, they might not feel good about injustice in something.

Image credit: Chris Lavado / provided by Warner Music Group