Former Fridge guitarist Kieran Hebden’s first album under the Four Tet moniker, 1999’s Dialogue, showcased his skills as a turntablist and producer able to spin fresh new worlds out of his source material. On 2001’s Pause, Hebden stretched those abilities further to craft what would become folktronica’s set text.

The tapping noise that opens the album might be a recording of someone typing at an office keyboard, but what follows quickly opens a window and escapes somewhere far beyond the urban sprawl. In contrast to the cold complexity of then-voguish IDM, Pause crackles with the warmth of sunlight on leaves and the playfulness of reflections on running water. Beats skitter gently like pebbles skimmed across a brook, as found sounds and ambient recordings (waves on a pebble beach, a buzzing mosquito) rustle within an ecosystem built from acoustic guitar, zither, harp, wind chimes and, on the sparkling “Twenty Three,” what sounds like someone hitting a watering can.

Much like Boards Of Canada’s Music Has The Right To Children (a clear influence here), Pause feels at once nostalgic and uncharted, uncovering a place both ancient and futuristic.

The warm, glowing embers of gentle, pastoral acoustronica and folkstep that make up Four Tet’s second full-length release make for a tender and emotive electronic album.

Pause sees the producer improving his ability to wring a variety of moods not only from chords and melody but also from the manipulation of audio and the clever juxtaposition of seemingly disparate musical elements, timbres and textures. His use of non-electronic elements like samples that could be gamelans, thumb pianos, glockenspiels and acoustic guitars — but that could also be heavily effected synth presets — in the context of cutting-edge drum programming and sampling delivers all sorts of interesting results. Pretty sounding acoustic instruments, field recordings, found sounds, lullaby melodies and a gentle, tender approach to production, mesh together with the twitches and edits of sampling and the snap and thud of dancefloor-derived beats. Pause is earthy, clever and welcoming.