“Podcasts are snapshots taken with your cell phone’s camera, a mix-CD is a portrait taken with a professional SLR.” Those were the words of Michael Mayer to inthemix last year, and if there’s a mix-CD to give credence to that quote in 2011, it’s FabricLive59. This is a portrait made with exacting care – no great surprise with Kieran Hebden at the helm. As Four Tet, Hebden has become gradually more seduced by the pulse of dance music in recent years, and his FabricLive is an ode to one of the clubs that rules his hometown. “This mix is not about my DJing,” he says. “It’s about London and fabric and nights out and my take on all that. The memories and the influences.”

The back-story to FabricLive59 says it all about how Four Tet works. After getting the call from Fabric, Hebden began an intensive search for records you wouldn’t find among the Beatport bestsellers. His first objective was to uncover rarities and shoulda-been-classics from the ‘90s groundswell of UK garage, a sound that had pricked his ears as a teenager (and is now, in the reliable way of things, back in vogue). As he put it to Time Out New York earlier this month, “I think there are so many lost gems from that era that are still relevant”. For every forgotten record he uncovered, there’s a story, like the saga of tracking down elusive UK funky trailblazer Apple to license Mr Bean, or securing a rare white label from Active Minds (one of the mix’s highpoints) through YouTube.

When he wasn’t digging, Hebden worked in the studio to create his own pieces of the story, while going to friends like Floating Points, Caribou and Burial to help connect the dots. Before piecing it all together, he sent audio engineer Sasha Lewis to FabricLive on a Friday to capture the buzz and conversation of clubbers as they passed between its rooms. These field recordings punctuate the narrative, a reminder that Fabric is what this mix is all about.

Finally, Hebden ensured he had each record on vinyl (even his own new creations were cut to acetate), before recording it all to computer. The idea was to maintain the analogue qualities of each piece of wax, without any cleaning up or smoothing over in the process. All that labour and precision comes together to make one of the most compelling journeys in the Fabric/FabricLive catalogue.

FabricLive59 is a mix that begs for the intimacy of headphones one minute, then has you yearning to hug a bass-bin the next. In its convergence of tempos and moods, from pensive dub to jacking house, it could just as comfortably sit in the Fabric oeuvre with the likes of Shackleton and Martyn. However, what those volumes don’t share is Hebden’s giddy celebration of UK garage. And so we begin with the gentle crackle of Immersion Partielle over snippets of early-in-the-night club chatter, before Crazy Bald Heads two-steps into the mix.

If your impressions of Four Tet begin and end in the Rounds era, his jaunty strides here could be a surprise. Alternatively, if the skipping rhythms of garage leave you cold, you might’ve hoped for something more cerebral. But as its creator says, the mix is about long, hazy nights in London, and this is a true sound of the capital.

This being Four Tet, we’re not subjected to the treacley side of garage, but its soulful, dubbed-out strains. The deep, resonant bassline of Pulse X leads the mix down a grimier path, but before long we’ve strolled to another of Fabric’s subterranean rooms that’s gripped by the ethereal low end of Floating Points. With Hebden as a guide, the connections make sense. His meticulous compiling pays off in sweet spot after sweet spot (it was well worth persisting with Apple).

The DJ’s hope is for you to play this mix “fucking loud”, and his insistence makes crystal-clear sense. Genius’s enduring slab of late-‘90s garage Waiting begs to be played on a shuddering dancefloor, and the same can be said for much of FabricLive59. This is not the bedroom session some might’ve pegged on Four Tet.

After a jostle through the crowded club’s corridor, pioneering minimalist David Borden signals a reprieve from garage. The sonorous, screwy head-fuck of STL’s Dark Energy towers over this middle stretch, leading the swing towards techno. We know Four Tet to be a master of atmospherics from his albums, and it’s there in his DJing too.

His movement into Burial’s blunted four-four gem Street Halo is as inspired as the sudden change-up to the supremely jacking Cape Fear is unexpected. Like any thrilling DJ, Four Tet takes you with him. After an ecstatically four-four-led final section (including Pyramid, perhaps the producer’s most straight-up house record), it’s time to face the morning sun. It’s a good thing we have the afterglow of a masterpiece mix, and the promise of doing it all over again.

FabricLive 59 will be released 23 September through fabric/Balance Music. Distributed through EMI.