Kieran Hebden is now playing arenas in a bromance with Fred Again and Skrillex. In a rare interview, he talks authenticity, bootlegging Taylor Swift – and his landmark legal battle with his old label
The last time he granted a big interview, Kieran Hebden was an underground darling playing clubs so small you could smell the loos from the cloakroom queue. In the eight years since, his career as Four Tet has undergone what he calls “a steady buildup” – and here he stands at its apex. This weekend, he will play to tens of thousands in a solo set at Finsbury Park in London. He is also the backbone of a roving dance-party trio alongside the EDM giant Skrillex and the everyman superproducer Fred Again – the most in-demand electronic outfit on Earth.
When I talk up the trio’s sold-out show at Madison Square Garden in New York, or their triumphant set closing Coachella for 100,000 desertgoers, Hebden waves it off. “That concept was coming at me after Coachella – ‘He’s finally getting the success he deserves’ – but it didn’t really feel like that,” he says, peering into a webcam, eyes circled by late-night rings, video-calling from the deck of the Woodstock cabin where he lives. “I did Coachella and the next gig was a three-and-a-half-hour set at my daughter’s 13th birthday party to 20 teenage girls, who I felt looked at me deeply unimpressed the whole time.”
