41 Longfield Street Late '80s is the debut collaboration between Kieran Hebden (aka Four Tet) and William Tyler, recorded between Los Angeles and Nashville and produced by Hebden. The album is a deeply personal reflection on a shared musical inheritance rooted in 1980s American country and folk.
Despite their different backgrounds, both artists grew up steeped in the music of Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, Joe Ely, and others from that era. Hebden recalls hearing these sounds constantly during his youth, with guitarist David Grissom leaving a formative impression. Tyler, meanwhile, was raised in Nashville where his father worked as a songwriter among that very scene. Their mutual reverence for this tradition became the foundation for the album.
Guitars were tracked in the studio with those influences in mind, before Hebden layered and reshaped the recordings through his experimental lens at home. The result is a record that reimagines the music of their youth through a contemporary, genre-fluid approach. “It’s nostalgia, but forward-looking,” says Tyler. “I don’t even know what genre I’m supposed to be in at this point—but I trust Kieran, and I love what we’ve done together.”
