You can hear clear progression in Four Tet’s third album, 2003’s Rounds, as Kieran Hebden gathers together ideas and themes from his previous two full-length outings and takes them further. Rounds shows a more dance floor-focused aesthetic in some tracks and a further refinement of his unique dreamy combination of acoustic instrument sounds, innocent melodies and a pastoral, bucolic aesthetic, with sampleism and beatology.

You get eight tracks, two of which are sub-two minute sketches/sonic palette cleansers, and across the album Hebden weaves his particular palette of sounds — overdriven, lolloping or angular drum breaks, harpsichords, plucked strings, broken folk samples — in with field recordings and found sounds, with some elements teetering between sonic dressing, sound effect, atmosphere and percussion, as though they’re unsure of their role. Sensitive, bewitching and subtle acoustronica.