Pitchfork

When you listen to Kieran Hebden's music, you know he's coming from a dozen different places at once. You could hear his love of the Impulse! catalog in the samples he used well before he channeled the sound in collaboration with drummer Steve Reid. He understands hip-hop and has a natural feel for the rhythms and textures of techno. He digs Warp-school IDM, near which his own records are usually slotted, but only as one type of electronic music among many. A pop/rock lineage stands out in his work with early Fridge material and various remixes since. No single genre hems him in.

And so it goes when it comes time to assemble a mix. In late 2004 he put one together for the Late Night Tales series and forced Fairport Convention to mingle with Terry Riley, Madvillain, and Sun Ra, and now he returns with a set for the DJ-Kicks series that's almost (but not quite) as varied. Anyone who turns to mix CDs for a unity will hear these sets as obnoxiously eclectic show-offs. Zimbabwean mbira jams sandwiched between Model 500 and Quickspace Supersport? Who does this dude think he is?

A guy who listens beyond category. Or, more accurately, a guy able to select and sequence disparate tracks in a way that highlights what they share rather than what keeps them apart. That's the real trick with this DJ-Kicks-- that the sensibility underlying it all is clearly audible. All of it, somehow, convincingly becomes "Four Tet-ish Music." This happens in part because the tracks as presented function as a sonic experience rather than a cultural one. The threads that stream through have to do with structure and timbre rather than the identity of the individual artists or their respective milieus. They're pried completely from their original settings to fit wholly in this one.

So the opening electronic drones and trumpet of David Behrman's "Leapday Night" could have come from any time in the past 35 years; the actual time (1990) and context (improv with Rhys Chatham, Ben Neill, and Takeisha Kosugi) are not important. What matters is the texture of the electronics, the simple warm harmonics, and prickly edge of a trumpet bleat that'll make some sense when Hebden moves into the spacious electro of the Syclops 2005 12-inch "Mom, the Video Broke". The live drums of that track are anything but stiff and robotic, which means that when Hebden follows with Curtis Mayfield's funky "If I Were Only a Child Again" the move is not too jarring, and in fact the sense of space surrounding the beats feels of a piece.

Perhaps because Late Night Tales steered toward the somnolent, DJ-Kicks is mostly upbeat and moving. Leftfield selections are eased into gradually with short snippets to dislodge the mix from where it's been. Two minute-long fragments-- of So Solid Crew's "Dilemma" and Akufen's "Psychometry 3.2"-- lead into Animal Collective's tribal beach-blanket B-side singalong "Baby Day"; with its xylophone, Gong's "Love Is How Ya Make It" shares a sonic affinity with the Shona People of Rhodesia track from the Nonesuch comp three cuts earlier, but Hebden gets to it via Quickspace Supersport's "Superspace"-- here sounding like an overlooked influence on Caribou-- and 35 seconds of Cabaret Voltaire's "Kneel to the Boss".

The technical skill is nothing special-- there are some jarring transitions and mostly the songs just bump one against another. But that doesn't seem particularly important for what Hebden is trying to do. It still flows, even though it's not a "journey in sound". By the time he closes with Group Home's "Up Against the Wall" and Autechre's "Flutter" you get the sense that he hasn't really gone anywhere, actually, preferring instead to bring the music in to him.