Four Tet – ‘Angel Echoes’

Composition

Like all the tracks on There Is Love In You, Angel Echoes is a great example of linear composition.  We looked at Gesaffelstein’s track ‘Viol’ in a Breakdown feature back in February this year, and discussed how the piece progresses by gradually adding and subtracting parts, evolving around a constant theme, with no obvious patterns to suggest a conventional verse/chorus structure.

Like ‘Viol’ and countless techno tracks, the linear progression of ‘Angel Echoes’ employs subtle changes in order to maintain an almost hypnotic feel. As such, the heavy use of repetition never becomes stale.

Conflicting Timings

The structure of ‘Angel Echoes’ is centred around Kieren Hebden’s unconventional chopping and arrangement of the main vocal sample, taken from an unknown source and apparently repeating the phrase “there’s love in you”. It’s the irregular timing of these vocal and instrumental cuts that give the listener’s brain difficulty trying to settle into the groove of the track.

people always ask what the Angel Echoes sample is… no one's ever going to work it out!

— Four Tet (@FourTet) August 7, 2012

The intro to the track is quite clearly a four-to-the-floor kick drum, with the first beat of each four accentuated by tiny delayed percussion hits. However, as soon as the melodic phrases come into the track, the piece changes time signature from 4/4.

Although the kick drum continues the same beat throughout the whole piece, the subtle, sharp inward breaths after every six beats now suggest a 6/4 time signature to the drums, while the vocals and instrumental parts are repeated in variations, every 12 beats.

Looking at the numbers, this might not sound complicated. A 12-beat loop played over a straight 6-beat drum loop would generally sound quite logical. However, here the vocal phrases and pad-like chord progression are divided into uneven 7-beat and 5-beat phrases, with the root chord of the piece, G minor, playing the first and eighth beats of each 12.

This irregular division of the phrase is further emphasised by the vibraphone part that comes in at around 1:43. In this simplified recreation of the pattern, we can hear that the only two occasions that all three elements land on the same beat are the first and eighth beats:

These uneven loop lengths and unusual timings are simple to create, but the effect is surprisingly complex, as the elements of the track intertwine with each other never quite repeating in exactly the same way. This is one of the key characteristics which makes ‘Angel Echoes’ so propulsive and compelling without allowing it to fall into a monotonous groove.

the vocal phrases and pad-like chord progression are divided into uneven 7-beat and 5-beat phrases, with the root chord of the piece, G minor, playing the first and eighth beats of each 12.

For a slightly clearer idea of these timing interactions and exactly what’s going, let’s look at these three elements on the track in a piano roll. Below we can see the chord progression in green (played in our audio example on piano), alongside the vibraphone/chime in blue, with the kick and hi-hat in red and yellow (click the image to enlarge).