Rounds is the third solo album by the British electronic musician Kieran Hebden, released under his alias Four Tet on 5 May 2003 by Domino Recording Company. Wanting to make a more personal record, Hebden recorded and produced the album in his North London flat over ten months using a desktop computer and a home hi-fi system. Its ten tracks feature elements of hip hop, jazz and folk. Apart from a guitar part recorded for "Slow Jam", the music is composed of between 200 and 300 samples, many processed beyond recognition.
Rounds produced two singles and one EP. Critics praised its unique fusion of electronic and organic styles, and Metacritic lists it as the fourth best-reviewed album of 2003. Several publications included Rounds on "best albums of the decade" lists. In May 2013, on the tenth anniversary of its release, Domino reissued Rounds with a bonus disc including a 2004 live performance.
Background and recording
After being a member of Fridge since 1995, Kieran Hebden began releasing solo records under the name Four Tet in 1998. His first release was the "Thirtysixtwentyfive" single, followed by the albums Dialogue in 1999 and Pause in 2001. The albums were influenced by hip hop, jazz and electronic music. and wanted to make a record that was more personal and harder to define. R&B producers Timbaland, the Neptunes and Rodney Jerkins, and the American musician Jim O'Rourke. The album uses between 200 in many cases beyond recognition. Hebden also used a Creative Labs microphone to record the guitar part for "Slow Jam"
Music
alt=|thumb|upright|Kieran Hebden produced Rounds almost entirely from heavily processed [[Sampling (music)|samples.]]Rounds contains ten instrumental tracks with a total running time of 45 minutes, which Colin Joyce of Spin called a "folktronica tapestry". Sound on Sound writer Sam Inglis said that the album was a "blend of fragile acoustic fragments, brutal beats and glitchy electronica"; Guardian critic David Peschek, who noted the influence of hip hop, R&B and folk music, wrote that "Rounds invents its own dizzying, unlikely genres." Rolling Stone's Kory Grow describes the album as "electronic dance music with a pulse and a heart murmur."
John Bush of AllMusic found the album contained elements of electronic and experimental music combined with "a dreamy melodicism sure to endear it to indie pop fans." Rounds was released on double vinyl and compact disc by Domino on 5 May 2003, spending one week on the UK Albums Chart at number 60. The second single, "As Serious as Your Life", was released in October 2003 on 7- and 12-inch formats featuring remixes and a 23-minute live version; a second 12-inch of the same song, containing a remix by Jay Dee featuring rapping by Guilty Simpson, was released on 18 November 2003. An EP, My Angel Rocks Back and Forth, was released in May 2004, containing Rounds tracks, two remixes, and the unreleased songs "I've Got Viking in Me" and "All the Chimers", plus a DVD of music videos for "My Angel Rocks Back and Forth", "She Moves She", "As Serious as Your Life" and Pause single "No More Mosquitoes".
Domino reissued Rounds in May 2013 on double vinyl, CD, and download. The CD and vinyl releases include a bonus CD of live material recorded in 2004 previously only available on the limited edition 2004 live album Live in Copenhagen 30th March 2004.
Reception
Rounds received critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews and ratings from mainstream critics, the album received a metascore of 89 based on 26 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". In his review for The Guardian, David Peschek described the album as "a trove of bewitching melody and subtle invention", and wrote that "Rounds succeeds not only as a meticulously conceived piece of art but also as a moving expression of human warmth." In Spin, Will Hermes described the album as a "varied trip" and noted "a darker vibe suggesting the influence of Hebden's labelmate Dan Snaith of Manitoba." Robert Christgau's review of Rounds for The Village Voice argued that Hebden "imagines an aural space in which electronic malfunction is cute rather than annoying or ominous," using "the computer as music box."
Accolades
Rounds was ranked number four on the Metacritic list of highest-scoring albums of 2003, and was named as one of the best albums of 2003 by many publications, including the NME, The Wire, The Observer, Prefix, Pitchfork, Drowned in Sound, Collective, Q, and Uncut.
Several publications rated Rounds as one of the best albums of the decade, with Pitchfork placing it at number 123 on their list of the top 200 albums of the 2000s. On similar lists, Drowned in Sound placed it at number 13, Beats Per Minute placed it at number 99, and No Ripcord at number 48. GQ rated it as one of the 40 best albums of the 21st century.