The DJ-Kicks imprint rises above the darkened depths of the over-crowded mixtape genre, subtly enticing you to impart with your lovely precious cash through the siren’s lure of big-name (but oh-so credible) guest DJs. This time round the responsibility falls into the lap of mixing, dicing and splicing technician Kieran Hebden, better known to those in the ‘Cardigans-At-Midnight’ set as Four Tet (‘Cardigans-At-Midnight’ is a derogatory term I just dreamed up for my own malicious gratification – if it offends, you’re probably wearing a cardigan right now?)

Four Tet draws his musical influences from many broad and eclectic sources, much like on his Late Night Tales offering. It covers a wide and diverse bunch of sounds and artists, of who I probably only recognise about half. Yet, he still douses everything with that patented and discernible Four Tet sound, chopping and cutting out bits and pieces from these works in such a way as to produce something approximating more a Four Tet album than a mix. It’s not really a DJ mix album in the truest sense of the form, not in the way we’ve come to understand them. There may be some guy playing other people’s records back-to-back over the course of 60 odd minutes, but it’s not the kind of record you’d be impelled to play readily in a social context on a dingy little dance floor. It’s far more a sit around-at-home album, kicking it with your intellectual homeys.

There are moments of audacity on display, moments of twisted pleasure, and moments of rich generosity – a definite highlight being the delicious build up to the Curtis Mayfield track ‘If I Were a Child Again’. Plus, the hip-hop blend of Group Home’s ‘Up Against the Wall’ with Showbiz and AG’s ‘Represent’ is also a real treat. But, for mine, Four Tet’s DJ-Kicks debut is a high-brow, strung-out, underwhelming whole. Personally, I’ll stick with the more-on-the-money Fabric series and await with measured patience for the DJ-Kicks imprint to return to the business of making people dance.