HANDS-ON TENORI-ON

“It's really good for live improvisation,” he says. “I use it to play rhythmically along with the drums just using the Push function, and I also use it to make dense washes of sound with the Bounce function. I also run it through effects and can get some crazy noise out of it – it just works really well at the shows because it's so visual.”

In the future Kieran also hopes to make more music on his Tenori-on. “I use it on top of my main [studio] set-up at the moment, but I could make whole tracks on it if I tried. It's just something new that I can reach for on top of everything else.”

So what is it that Kieran likes best about the unit?

“I like that it's so portable,” he says. “I use it on train journeys and stuff just to mess around with ideas. And it's so quick to work on – you can get a lot of sound working together very quickly.”

Kieran is keeping busy in 2008 with another album with Steve Reid, which he is currently finishing in New York, “and there will be plenty of touring next year, as usual.”

But after achieving so much at such a young age – he started out in his teens – what else is there left to achieve for Hebden and what are his remaining ambitions?

“I'm just trying to do my own thing, something a bit different,” comes the somewhat unsurprising answer!



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