If you were given a slideshow lineup of photos, the odds are that you would not guess that the three men above are one of the most deceptively funky trios on earth. But since you are reading this blog and presumably fluent in perusing headlines, you’re aware that it’s Ben “Thomson” UFO, Dan “Caribou/Daphni” Snaith, and Kieren “Four Tet” Hebden. For the last half-decade, the two Brits and a Canadian Mathematician have been very quietly doing B2B2B sets that continually rank among the best three-in-a-row streaks since those Bulls championships.
At Coachella Week One, the three convinced about 5,000 that the Yuma Tent at Coachella was an underground rave that you should’ve had to have found using a semi-functional compass in a British cornfield circa 1994. That’s impressive, but no major feat for three people with abyssal crates that somehow never repeat themselves. I have spent too much time in this lifetime trawling for obscurities, attempting to unearth rarities ignored by posterity and most popular music. Somehow, these three know all the songs. Psychedelic 70s African music, esoteric Chicago house bangers, boom-bap B-Sides that never made it west of Philly, disco deep cuts, and avant-garde British beat music. All blended effortlessly into some post-modern collage that shows no stitches and exhibits relentless groove.
It’s unclear how they do this every time, but there are few on earth who can travel so far without ever running out of fuel. Their latest mix has no tracklist. Shazam is mostly useless. The only thing I recognized in the first hour was “Live at the BBQ.” This is for the best. In a streaming era where all the knowns are known, they’re still able to preserve some sense of mystery. The hope that you’ll stumble across one of these gems in a decade in a dusty record store, or they’ll only be available in this mix. We’re lucky
Download:
MP3: Four Tet + Daphni + Ben Ufo on Dublab (4/19/17)
