Kieran Hebden, AKA Four Tet and William Tyler, have recorded an album together and will release it on September 19, on the Eat your Own Ears label.
Entitled 41 Longfield Street Late ‘80s, the first track to be released from the album is a cover of Lyle Lovett‘s ‘If I Had A Boat.’ Eleven minutes in length, Lovett’s original version of the song appeared on his second album Pontiac.
Speaking about the collaboration, stylised as Kieran Hebden + William Tyler, Hebden explains:
I met William Tyler at Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee back in 2013. We had mutual friends and kept in touch. Every now and then the idea would come up of us working together. We first tried it remotely, sending ideas back and forth, which resulted in our 12” release, ‘Darkness, Darkness.’ The plan was to get into a studio together, which we managed in early 2022 in Los Angeles at Sargent Recorders where my friend Sam (Floating Points) had just made his album with Pharoah Sanders.
We discussed references for an album and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Fennesz, and AM oldies radio stations came up. But the main influence was found when we discovered a shared deep connection to ‘80s American country and folk music – artists like Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, and Joe Ely. My father was a huge fan of this sound and through my teenage years I heard this music most days and was taken to see loads of performances. The guitar player David Grissom made a huge impact on me as a kid learning to play. It’s not an influence that I usually mention but it’s in there more than I realize and must have helped me develop my sound and ideas.
It turns out that William’s father was working in Nashville as a songwriter during this period and actually knew people like David Grissom. So William had grown up with this music as well and knew all the stuff that I was talking about and we both felt that it had shaped our styles.
Our idea for the album was to make music that focused on that influence and brought it to the front of our awareness. We’d record the guitars in the studio, exploring styles and sounds from that music, and then I’d take it all home to my computer and bring it into my other world.
A cover of the Lyle Lovett song, “If I Had a Boat” was the most literal pull from this ‘80s country sound. We also recorded long improvisations around chords, patterns and tones from songs we remember from growing up. The Lyle Lovett cover ended up over 11 minutes long.
I spent almost two years doing the computer bit of the album and sometimes sent stuff back over to William who added more overdubs and ideas in response. On some tracks, all that’s left of the guitars are digital fragments of sound making rhythmic textures. Taking it slowly allowed us to create a new sound out of this shared teenage experience and gift from our fathers.’
William Tyler adds:
‘I had always been a fan of Kieran’s music. We almost crossed paths at Bonnaroo in 2013 – which I know he has touched on – and we had a small but crucial crew of mutual buddies. Right before COVID lockdown, I reached out to him about working together – I mean this is like, shoot your shot, who knows.
We bonded over a mutual love of a lot of late ‘90s post-rock and such, but I have to admit I was kinda shocked (in the best way) that he was so versed in ‘80s Americana. Not so much my world, but definitely a world I grew up around. I never thought that a connection with someone like Kieran would end up coming down to both of our dads and their mutual love of a certain kind of music. I grew up in Nashville, he grew up in London. But we heard things the same way, I think. I particularly remember us talking about the Nanci Griffith album, Storms.
Well, that was probably the first week of March 2020 that we actually finally talked, and of course the world would change about a week later. I moved from Los Angeles back to Nashville during lockdown, but Kieran and I kept up a correspondence, mostly over records that we were listening to at the time. Every once in a while we would send each other tracks. I was trying to audition for him, but I wasn’t sure what to do. Honestly, a lot of the stuff that I initially wanted to pitch to him as potential tracks we could work on together ended up becoming the bulk of my new album, Time Indefinite.
At some point, Kieran sent me a thing that he’d been messing with – a version of “Darkness, Darkness” by The Youngbloods. I had the distinct sense that he was putting me up for an audition, and I went to town with it alongside my absolute ride-or-die collaborator, Jake Davis. After that track, we continued the conversation about doing an actual album together.
Fast-forward to March 2022 and Kieran and I went to Los Angeles so that we could actually work on tracks together in person – after almost two years of talking about it. Like any great Los Angeles experience, the studio itself had layers upon layers of history, including all of the collectible gear. I never really thought “Oh, we’re gonna have this album done by a certain point.” I just knew that when Kieran felt like it was done, it would be done.
I think we both in our own specific ways want to recontextualize a lot of music that we grew up with, regardless of the genre, and I think that’s what this album reflects. It’s a lot of nostalgia but it’s also very forward focused. I don’t even know what genre I’m supposed to be in at this point, but I trust Kieran and I love what we’ve done together. He’s become a dear friend and I can’t wait to see what’s ahead for us.’
‘If I Had A Boat‘ may be heard below:
The album tracklisting is as follows:
- If I Had A Boat
- Spider Ballad
- I Want An Antenna
- When It Rains
- Timber
- Loretta Guides My Hands Through The Radio
- Secret City
The album may be pre-ordered via Bandcamp, including CD and vinyl formats.
