The Creative Works of Four Tet & Jason Evans

In amongst my love for a huge variety of different musical genres, is the appreciation for the visual side of things; The artworks that adorn album covers, the creative worlds that surround an artist. I like to see great partnerships blossom from a shared appreciation of each others craft, and this is no more apparent than between that of Four Tet and photographer Jason Evans.

A selection of Jason Evans’ work on sleeve imagery for Fridge.

The duo have been long time collaborators, dating all the way back to Hebden’s first band Fridge and their second release, ‘Semaphore’. Since then and over the course of the next 26 years, Evans has shot the visuals for every one of Hebden’s 15 studio albums, as well as myriad of single, EP, Remix and Live album releases. Each output is always very abstract and singular in appearance, as is Evans’ signature style. But when you see the whole body of work sitting together they all appear to fit as one to build out the ‘identity’ of Four Tet.

Jason Evans has been a working photographer since the mid 90s, and his work crosses a broad spectrum of genres ranging from fashion photography to street photography and abstract image making. A multi-disciplinary creative, he’s able to push the boundaries of what can classically be considered ‘photography' in the way he takes an incredibly abstract approach to visual creation. As you can see from many of the Four Tet releases, we’re not merely looking at single frames, but oftentimes collaged elements brought together to create something brand new.

‘Rounds’ for example looks as though it has holes burnt into the photographed image. Evans will sometimes give small peeks behind the curtain to show what you’re able to see when you zoom out of frame and inspect the shooting environment for what it really is. Some examples may seem simply constructed, but its his highly curated eye that’s able to work on a macro level and find the smallest element that will work when blown up and cropped. It sort of borders on the realms of abstract set-building, photocollage, and surrealism.

The original rendition of ‘There Is Love In You’, produced by hole-punching negative film frames and piecing back together.

A scroll through his instagram reveals small moments within comments where Evans gives us a look into his process. The sleeve art for ‘There Is Love In You’ is constructed from hundreds of hole punched negatives, and then meticulously hand-placed on a 10x8 glass plate, capturing tiny elements from the individual film frames. A cropped in version was used for the final cover, but a much larger extensive version was created originally which shows more of a realistic scale of the single circles.

Behind the Scenes of Jason working on his cover for Four Tet’s ‘Parallel’ album, adding sticky dots he’s collected from around the world to manipulated photographs supplied by Hebden. Credit: @jasonevansfoto

One of the things I enjoy about looking at the body of work as a whole, is with each album the level of complexity within the image making takes on a new lease of life, with the process either becoming more complicated in order to reach the final outcome, or the imagery itself is simple in process but complicated as a visual. Additionally one of the best things about abstract work, is a lot of time it’s very open to your own personal interpretation of it. The creator may have their own meaning behind the image that they may or may not reveal to the outside world, but it’s on you to form a feeling towards it and try to understand what it could mean in relation to the music it’s representing.

Overlay Developments for the 16 Oceans Album artwork, making use of Evans’ Digital/Analogue process.

Four Tet’s latest release this year after a whirlwind 2023 performing across the globe as part of the ‘Pangbourne House’ Mafia, Three draws upon some of the same classic visual components we’ve become accustomed to. This time around Evans went wild with a photocopier, Letraset, and a dice, creating hundreds of variations of a4 sized visuals that share some of the same characteristics, but appear very fragmented when displayed together. I cant even begin to imagine the number of combinations this layout might have gone through before settling on a final output to use.

The visual development process for 2024’s LP ‘Three’.

Four Tet albums are some of the only records nowadays where I’ll go out of my way to buy a physical copy, and are some of the last remaining CD’s left in my collection after having a major cull a few years back. In the same way that Shaun Bloodworth’s work has had a profound effect, Jason Evans sits in the same category, and will forever be a source of inspiration. His catalogue of work acts as a masterclass in pushing the boundaries of visual communication.

For more examples of Jason Evans’ great work, visit https://jasonevans.info/

and more information about upcoming Four Tet shows on https://www.fourtet.net/