"Angel Echoes," as the first track on There Is Love in You earlier this year, contained all the saccharine innocence that both those names imply. Based around a cerulean female vocal that looped and stuttered, it held the listener in blissful limbo for four minutes. Hebden's mate Caribou and Brian Eno affiliate Jon Hopkins obviously agree with his original stance, as they deliver their own takes on the aesthetic.
That is, we're held quite comfortably in different kinds of dreamworlds, but never really taken anywhere. Particularly Caribou's version: He turns it into the same kind of dense psychedelic mish-mash that characterised Swim, and makes it more desolate and foreboding. Tones of hope come through with flashes of the vocal and rising strings. Pulsing minor chords throb throughout, and warm bass enriches the clattering melange. There's beauty in the rich detritus, hidden within its dense folds, which never manages to completely break out. This is cinematic, deep stuff—just a bit incidental.
Hopkins, meanwhile, delivers an even more baby blue version, underlaid by a simplistic piano that reflects his work with Coldplay, until it drops into almost empty, breathy fragility and is reborn with washes of strings and choral "aah"'s and the original's angel voice which penetrates briefly and subtly, all of which leaves you wide-eyed. Again, it doesn't arrive at the euphoric plain it promises, but there's more focus to the idea this time, and as a result it comes out shining.
Buy Four Tet - Angels Echoes Remixes at
  
Tracklist: Four Tet - Angels Echoes Remixes
 01. Angel Echoes (Caribou Remix)
02. Angel Echoes (Jon Hopkins Remix)
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