Kieran Hebden is, it has to be said, something of a genius. The groundwork for Pause was laid on Dialogue--his debut solo album under the guise of Four Tet--landed in 1999, and immediately went about redrawing the parameters of inventive dance music. A peculiar mix of live-sounding instrumental jazz and technologically super-precise laptop dance trickery, it sounded nothing like Hebden's actual group--his day job is spent toiling in occasionally inspired post-rockers Fridge--and, as it happened, very little like anything else in existence. While not as radical a statement as Dialogue seemed, Pause is a definite update--a second brave step into the great beyond; where Dialogue employed jazz sax and flute in its evocation of a 21st-century jazz meltdown, Pause goes even further, coiling whispers of harp and zither over layer-on-layers of fidgeting, rattling percussion. His inspirations? Well, like his friend and protégé, Canadian tech-wizard Manitoba (whose excellent Start Breaking My Heart is easily the equal of Pause), Hebden collects sounds and melodies from a dizzying array of places--ancient British folk music, the rattle of typewriter keys, the gurgle of running water, even a field recording of a children's playground. Genius? There really is no other word for it. --Louis Pattison