All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Tiny Mix Tapes

This is an awesome, magnificent, incandescent, trailblazing record.

Read Full Review >

Village Voice (Consumer Guide)

The drums get busy at times, but never fear--this sounds more like Rounds than it does like anything else. Just a little funkier.

Read Full Review >

Junkmedia

When Pause came out in 2001, that sounded like an artist at his peak. But get this: He's still at his peak, and the view is no less scintillating, crisp, and sweet, rolling with drums and shaded by clouds of horn reverb and file-sharing swish.

Read Full Review >

Dot Music

"Everything Ecstatic" pulses with imagination and subtle talent, choosing to follow a sweet technicolour road rather than take a harder, and far well trodden path.

Read Full Review >

Delusions of Adequacy

Even at its most intense, Everything Ecstatic combines percussive aggression with warmth and vivid emotion.

Read Full Review >

Splendid

Like Madlib or MF DOOM, Four Tet is at the crest of the electronica/hip-hop wave, forcing the genre's evolution into new realms and making everyone else look like amateurs in the process.

Read Full Review >

Magnet

Emphasizes melodic intention in a manner that transcends electronica or the outer reaches of experimental hip hop. [#68, p.92]

Lost At Sea

It boasts the asset of versatility, possessing the buoyancy and charisma of a distinguishable party album whilst remaining resistant to the usual temptations associated with the so-called “lap-pop” tag.

Read Full Review >

The Onion (A.V. Club)

It's the sound of a music fiend obsessively pawing at his record collection and troubling over ways to pay it proper tribute.

Read Full Review >

New Musical Express

Hebden has recalibrated his sound to something darker and more rhythmic, without losing a note of melody. [21 May 2005, p.66]

The Guardian

There are more ideas in a few minutes of Everything Ecstatic than on most big dance producers' recent albums.

Read Full Review >

Uncut

Four Tet's epiphany is concerned entirely with the properties of sound itself. [Jun 2005, p.117]

Dusted Magazine

Even if it is hard at certain points to cut through the thick fog of psych drum riffs, Everything Ecstatic leaves ears ringing like a loud summer afternoon in the city – sun-drenched cacophony that doesn’t quite know where it’s going just yet.

Read Full Review >

Mojo

It's a noticeably urban record, an irritated rebuttal to the notion that dance music is dead. [Jun 2005, p.98]

musicOMH.com

An album of considerable depths, beauties and terrifying contrasts.

Read Full Review >

PopMatters

This is his best flowing album to date, his most demanding, most infuriating, most invigorating and most intense.

Read Full Review >

Prefix Magazine

It lacks the mind-blowing qualities that made Rounds the essential album in his catalogue, but Everything Ecstatic is another must-own from Four Tet, the most reliable of producers.

Read Full Review >

ShakingThrough.net

Everything Ecstatic doesn’t come together as solidly as prior Four Tet releases, but it unquestionably contains the blueprint for far greater explorations to come.

Read Full Review >

Spin

Sometimes Kieran Hebden's electronic music is dawn-over-the-Buddhist-shrine gorgeous. [Jun 2005, p.108]

Pitchfork

Everything Ecstatic marks his first slight step backward as a solo artist but it's hardly a failure.

Read Full Review >

Blender

This dense noise assault may not sustain the feeling of ecstasy from beginning to end, but its percolating trance rhythms... and captivating space experiments... connect on a visceral level that's rare in the cerebral world of electronic music. [Jun 2005, p.109]

Drowned In Sound

For the most part, Evertything Ecsatic succeeds, but occasionally Hebden strays from the path.

Read Full Review >

Q Magazine

Immediately satisfying. [Jun 2005, p.120]

The Wire

Hebden is a voracious consumer and producer of ideas, although there is sometimes the feeling, amid all this glut and gusto, that they're ideas for idea's sake. [#256, p.54]

All Music Guide

The left turn Hebden has taken into jumpy Krautrock with 2005's Everything Ecstatic will make listeners yearn for the clever, nuanced productions he turned in on Pause and Rounds.

Read Full Review >

Stylus Magazine

Everything Ecstatic provides an enjoyable listen, but it also sounds as much like a groping as a declaration.

Read Full Review >

Almost Cool

The album just doesn't have the innovation that previous albums from Hebden have shown.

Read Full Review >

cokemachineglow

It’s an intermittently interesting and somewhat forward looking work-in-process, but at the moment Hebden sounds like an underground hip-hop producer with a few ideas but no MC.

Read Full Review >

Urb

Ecstatic may not be the warm follow-up some people were expecting, but it's an equally fascinating, engaging album. [Jun 2005, p.78]

Rolling Stone

Hebden's lovingly arranged pet sounds cohere nicely when he jacks up his trip-hop-y beats.

Read Full Review >

Playlouder

The question is: do you actually need another disc like this, given that it doesn't quite have that sense of otherness that Boards of Canada have in spades, or that sound-as-texture that Aphex Twin utilised so sumptiously on 'Richard D James', or Amon Tobin's truly forward looking drum programming.

Read Full Review >

Neumu.net

His party peaks too early, though, with the gear soon settling into a middling middle, where the songs start to sound less distinct, and the changes start to become less pronounced, and interest starts to lag, and where, eventually, like a desperate host hoping to keep the party going, Hebden stacks on break after break in a gallant attempt to remind you that the disc is actually playing.

Read Full Review >

Under The Radar

Sadly lacks the emotion and, frankly, the catchiness of his previous release. [#10, p.111]

Alternative Press

There's nothing on Everything Ecstatic the likes of Madlib haven't already done better. [Jul 2005, p.186]

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this album is 7.6 (out of 10) based on 18 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

San Y gave it a10:
Four Tet is easily the world's most exciting electronic producer. "Everything Ecstatic" is an album that is incredibly technical and endlessly layered. "A Joy" is a prime example of this producer's talent for creating a masterpiece from slicing and dicing the most diverse genres. My favourite track of the album is the modest "Clouding," a warm firework display which inhabits the ill fitting mix of ethnic smash and comfortable flow which just encapsulates Four Tet's sound.

andrew h gave it a10:
Best Album Ever. Even better live.

Kelly P gave it an8:
Great sound, very eclectic, fun and chill at the same time

[Anonymous] gave it an8:
evil production.

Elliott M gave it a9:
I wasn't sure how I felt about this album when I first heard it, but having just seen him live and playing new material, this album has suddenly come to life. I still like Rounds much more as a whole, though there are plenty of highlights on this album, particularly "Smile Around the Face," one of the very best songs he has ever done.

Cory C gave it a1:
Horrible. I wouldn't even download this for free.

Marc D gave it an8:
Toe tapping goes out the window as you find your entire body gyrating to this brilliant album. Great body shaking stuff.

Music

Upcoming &Recent Releases

Everything Ecstatic

Album Info

Summary

Also On Metacritic

What The Critics Said

What Our Users Said

Upcoming &
Recent Releases