Over the course of three Four Tet albums, Kieran Hebden has achieved the sonic equivalent of discovering new colors in the visible spectrum, balancing a teetering pile of other responsibilities all the while. Given his involvement with his acclaimed post rock band Fridge, and his label Text, not to mention an ever revolving spate of remixes and one-offs, Hebden sometimes finds his plate load to be overwhelming -- and this says nothing about the promotional aspect of his music, which includes touring and the interview you’ll be reading in a moment.

Success is a double-edged sword. When Splendid showed up at Boston’s Paradise Rock Club for this interview, Hebden was not at the venue, but at a record shop down the block, evidently unwinding from a hectic tour with Prefuse 73 and Manitoba. Hebden was not the happiest at being tracked down (which we achieved by looking for "the guy with the yellow sneakers and big hair", as directed by the Manitoba guys). However, with weary patience and polite attentiveness, he gave us the interview we requested over the din of sound check.

Talking with the man behind Four Tet, you begin to feel a bit sorry for taking up his dwindling time. Still, Hebden only has himself to blame: Rounds, his latest release, is a genre-defying masterstroke that will play your heartstrings like a fiddle. Part glitch-hop, part folk-rock, part musique concrete, its delicate fragmented beauty is possibly the loveliest thing you’ll hear this year. (A little tip for Kieran: when you make music like this, expect people to line up.) The following is the full chat we had with Hebden next to the club’s merchandise booth, conducted as John Whitney from Brainwashed.com lurked nearby, awaiting his turn.

Splendid: How has the tour been so far? (Ha! -- Ed.)

Kieran Hebden: It's been really, really good. I'm a bit out of it now. These are the last couple of shows. It's been mad because I play every night.

Splendid: Have you been touring with Manitoba and Prefuse 73 this whole time?

Kieran Hebden: Yeah. Well, Prefuse has been doing loads of dates, and me and Manitoba have joined for like six or seven shows.

Splendid: I know you're a huge fan of hip hop. How is it being on a tour with Prefuse, who is considered to be sort of at the forefront these days?

Kieran Hebden: Prefuse? Oh, it's good. I really like his record and stuff. Both our albums came out on the same days, so (the tour) seemed like the obvious thing to do.

Splendid: How similar is your set-up with the rest of the tour lineup?

Kieran Hebden: Everyone is completely different. Manitoba play with two drum kits, guitar and visuals and stuff. I'm just two laptops and a mixer. Prefuse is, like, Moogs and synths and stuff like that. Everyone has a different approach to what they're doing.

Splendid: Do you have a lot of stuff prepared, running through the laptops?

Kieran Hebden: Normally, the stuff I do live is quite different than it was on the record. I'm quite interested in the idea of live improvisation of music, so I take themes and rhythms and melodies and stuff that you hear on the record, but then I’ll tweak it, depending on what mood I’m in on the night. I like the idea that recordings exist on the record and then slowly kind of evolve through the live sets. It’s the same way that guys making jazz records used to do it. I’ve never been interested in just trying to recreate that you hear on the record, at gigs.

Splendid: So if you had to write the music for Rounds now, would it be a different album?

Kieran Hebden: No, it captures the moment. I’d never make a record over again. A record captures the moment, and then you move on, really.

Splendid: Things are getting pretty crazy for you. Every interview that I read with you, it seems that your spare time is a casualty for all of the music you’re involved with.

Kieran Hebden: Things are really crazy now, yeah.

Splendid: What’s up with Fridge?

Kieran Hebden: It’s kind of on hold for a bit... we’re all busy with other stuff, but as a band, we formed when we were fifteen. It’s kind of natural for it to slow down a bit. And it carries on because we’re all best friends. I can’t imagine not doing it -- but at the same time, it’s not a priority where we spend like a month out of every year on it.

Splendid: What do your Fridge cohorts, Sam Jeffers and Adem Ilhan, think of Four Tet and all of the stuff you do outside of the band?

Kieran Hebden: I’ve been doing it for as long as they’ve known me, so they’re really kind of supportive. They come to all the shows. They’re doing their own things too. Adem has a solo record coming out; it’s kind of singer-songwriter kind of thing. Sam’s at college and he designs webpages and stuff.

Splendid: Yeah, he did the Domino Records site, and I read that he did yours as well.

Kieran Hebden: Yeah, and he did Manitoba’s.

Splendid: You, Sam and Adem had been friends for quite sometime before forming Fridge.

Kieran Hebden: Yeah, since we were about eleven or twelve.

Splendid: What were you guys like as kids?

Kieran Hebden: I don’t know. Exactly like we are now, but without puberty, I guess, you know? (laughs)

Splendid: Arty? Inquisitive? That sort of thing?

Kieran Hebden: Well, as long as we’ve known each other, we’ve been making music, and stuff like that. When I first met Adem through the fact that we were both learning to play guitar and teaching ourselves all the chords and stuff, I must have been about thirteen. I met Sam a bit earlier.

Splendid: Early on, did you see any seeds for the success you guys would have later?

Kieran Hebden: No, because when you’re young, you don’t think about what it means as relevance to your life, the things that you do. That’s why it’s so great. When you’re young, you just mess around -- enjoy ‘em, and take them for what they are. Only later on in life do you start thinking about whether what you do is going to define your existence or not.

Splendid: Well, you guys were pretty young when you made that first Fridge record, and it made a lot of waves.

Kieran Hebden: We didn’t really think about any of it at the time. It was just weird for us. We were so removed from the music world, the music business, the music scene and whatever. And we just quietly got on with our thing. We put like three albums out without even really thinking about it. It wasn’t 'til later on where music became kind of a career thing, where we quit college and started doing it full time.

Splendid: Are you eager to get back into the studio and do another Fridge record?

Kieran Hebden: Definitely. We’re talking about it already. I can’t imagine anything would come out at least till next year, because we need time to record, and I’m so busy with (Four Tet).

Splendid: Are you going to release the record on Text?

Kieran Hebden: Yeah. It worked out really well for us last time, so...

Splendid: Good. I wanted to ask you how you felt, as a label boss, being more involved from the creation end to distribution to...

Kieran Hebden: It’s just one of those things. I’m someone who buys loads and loads of records, vinyl and all that sort of stuff, and it was something I knew I wanted to do at some point of my life -- just to be a part of that whole thing, to actually put a record out myself. It’s pretty easy, once everything is set up. Once you’ve done one record, you just give the stuff to the same people and it happens all over again.

Splendid: Some people have opposite thoughts on that.

Kieran Hebden: It depends on what you’re trying to achieve. I’ll license the records out to labels for the rest of the world, and I’ll only do England because I know I can’t cope with anything bigger than that, really.

Splendid: You only have two records out on Text so far. Is it because your schedule interferes?

Kieran Hebden: Yeah, I can’t say to a band, "I’ll put your record out," because it’s very likely I’ll have to go on tour for two months and not be able to do anything with it. I’ll just let them down, you know?

Splendid: At this point, what are the main creative differences between Fridge and Four Tet?

Kieran Hebden: The same as it’s always been. The fact that Fridge is a band and it’s about three people, the communication between us and the way we work together. And Four Tet is a solo project and it’s just about me -- no compromises. Musically, the sky is the limit with both of our projects. I don’t want to tie either of them down to a specific area.

Splendid: Did Four Tet begin as an outlet for the stuff that wouldn’t fit in with Fridge?

Kieran Hebden: No, it was just the fact that I got a computer because I was at college. I was really into free jazz music at the time, and I wanted to do music inspired by that. Because I hated all of the music that was coming out that was claiming to be jazz influenced but was really kind of polite and mellow. Yeah, and I didn’t even really think of (Four Tet) in terms of releases. I just did all of this stuff and chucked it out there, and suddenly I had another project just as big as Fridge without even thinking about it. I think once the response was so positive, that encouraged me to take it more seriously. And here I am today.

Splendid: How have your techniques with Four Tet evolved since you began messing around on your computer?

Kieran Hebden: Quicker. (Laughs) Super fast. I’m more confident. I don’t have to think about the computer any more. I just think about the music and ideas I have. I have ideas and I just execute them. I don’t give a shit about computers. I have no studio equipment. I have no mixing desks, no effects or anything. I use the same computer, and exactly the same software and stuff I’d done from the start. I don’t upgrade anything. I just carry on.

Splendid: What are you using?

Kieran Hebden: Just a PC running Cakewalk, and primarily Audiomulch, which I write all my stuff on.

Splendid: You still blend of a lot acoustic elements into your work. Do you create or record any of it yourself?

Kieran Hebden: No, everything’s samples.

Splendid: Where do you get them?

Kieran Hebden: Records. Records or TV. There’s some little bits that I play here and there, but I’ll never sit down with a guitar and write a melody and record it, because that’s not the idea. The idea is that the computer is the instrument, essentially, and any sound that’s put into the computer must then be manipulated. I might record some guitar and put it onto the computer and chop it up and write a guitar melody out of those bits of sounds, but the whole way I get the production sound that I get is using the computer as an instrument, basically.

Splendid: There’s a rubber squeeze toy on "Slow Jam". Did you play that?

Kieran Hebden: No. A sample.

Splendid: Do you have a conscious intent to blur the lines between rock and electronic music?

Kieran Hebden: No. I think there are hazy lines, but I don’t really believe that it’s so simple that you have these tight genres. People honestly say to me, "Aw, you’re trying to bridge the gap." But it just pisses me off, basically. As far as I’m concerned, I’m trying to move forward, not sideways. I think that there’s a million examples of music in all genres that cross over in all sorts of weird ways.

I’m not a purist about music. I think the best musicians appreciate most styles of music and have to embrace them. Most good musicians don’t listen to the style of music they make very often at all. The worst are the hip-hop bands -- hip-hop bands are real purists all the time and say, "Oh, if you’re into hip-hop, you should only listen to hip-hop." And it’s ridiculous, because all the greatest hip-hop producers are good at what they do because they listen to such an incredible range of music. Like DJ Premier or someone, who listens to folk records; he listens to jazz records, because he’s looking for samples and things. His complete knowledge of music puts others to shame, I reckon.

Splendid: Your music appeals to the academic palate, but it’s also really ear friendly. It has quite a wide appeal. How do you approach it? Do you have pop sensibilities that you like to tap into?

Kieran Hebden: I like a load of pop music. I care just as much about the next Britney single as I do the next Godspeed album. But at the end of the day, I make music that I don’t really think about in those terms as I make it. It’s just important for me to make music that’s human. You listen to it and it hits you on a physical level, or on an emotional level. Music doesn’t need to be just about intellectual ideas. I think if you’re going to make powerful music that’s going to change the future, you can’t just make something that’s purely to think about in a certain way. The most powerful records are the ones that people can understand in a human way, instantly, at the same time as changing their perception of what music is all about. If you look at a record like "Get Ur Freak On" or "Windowlicker", or something, records that have really defined music over the last couple of years. They’re records that come on the radio and the first thing that happens is you understand that straight away you feel it in a completely natural way. The second thing that happens is you realize it’s unlike anything you’ve ever heard before. And I think that’s the way it should be.

Splendid: Yeah, I agree. In the sense that you just described, I think Rounds is a beautiful record. It’s one of my favorites of this year.

Kieran Hebden: Thank you very much.

Splendid: As immediate as it is, you also use a lot of glitch elements that give the music an edge. In "She Moves Me", there’s the fragmented guitar.

Kieran Hebden: That kind of aggressive digital manipulation has been sort of a key sound. In the same way that synth toms were big in the ‘80s, glitch has been big... (laughs)

Splendid: Yeah. Do you think that glitch is sort of fashionable these days?

Kieran Hebden: It’s a fashion in some ways. I think that it’s just an obvious technique that’s developed with the technology in the same way that electric guitars came in, or distortion, or drum machines. It’s just the nature of it. If you manipulate sounds on the computer and start editing it, unless you curve off the waveforms, you naturally get these little clicks and glitchy sounds. And it’s because all records are made on computers these days. It’s one of those things where technology has completely affected the way music has developed.

Splendid: It’s almost the way guitar feedback became a form of rebellion...

Kieran Hebden: All the biggest developments in music usually happen with people abusing the technology. When samplers were invented, the idea was that you would get to sample violin sounds, so the violin on your synth was more realistic, not that you could use it to sample five seconds off a James Brown record. I don’t think anyone invented the sampler thinking, "God, what everyone’s going to want to do is take little snippets of James Brown records!"

Splendid: Speaking of glitch, you’ve worked with Pole. What made you want to work with him?

Kieran Hebden: His record came out and it sounded different than everyone else. It was pretty exciting, and he is a really nice guy. We met up and we were both keen to do it.

Splendid: He provided a track for you to remix...

Kieran Hebden: Yeah, and I provided a track for him to remix. We each did a track, and we each remixed each other’s track for a little twelve inch.

Splendid: How do you think that turned out?

Kieran Hebden: I was really, really happy with it. It was kind of a turning point of a record for me, because it was the first time my stuff got a little dance-y. Not dance-y, maybe, but the beats had more echoes and a kind of American R&B style production that was around at the time. I guess I hadn’t really looked into it as much before.

Splendid: With Pole, Manitoba and the guys in Fridge, it seems like you have a lot of relationships that are centered around music.

Kieran Hebden: Most of the friends I’ve made over the past few years are involved in music in some form, because, with most of the people I encounter, that’s the most thing we have in common straight away.

Splendid: Any collaborations coming up that you’d care to mention?

Kieran Hebden: I’ve been working with Beth Orton a bit on some tracks on her new album. I’ve done remixes for Super Furry Animals and Radiohead. But mainly touring at the moment.

Splendid: Once you finish the tour, will that be it for a while, touring-wise?

Kieran Hebden: I’ll be touring a lot for the next year, because people want to see me all over the place.

Splendid: That’s a good place to be. Do you enjoy it?

Kieran Hebden: Yeah, it’s amazing. It’s a weird lifestyle. But it’s important, I think. You put out a record and people buy it. I know, as a music fan myself, I appreciate it when a band bothers to show up in your town and perform to you. I see it as kind of an important part of it.

Splendid: You’re on record as being a little ambivalent towards the whole promotional process of the recording business. The fact that you have to release music on certain dates to maximize sales, etcetera.

Kieran Hebden: It’s annoying that these things exist, but at the same time I completely understand them. I manage myself and I have to have an understanding of the music industry. I have to take it all really seriously and I have to work with it all. I’ve done well over 100 interviews over the last couple of months, whatever it’s been. It’s all important.

Splendid: So, does this interview represent the low point of this grueling cycle?

Kieran Hebden: It will carry on all year. Where I tour, I stop off and do all sorts of interviews.

Splendid: Well, I appreciate you taking some time out for us. I’ll let you get to your sound check.

Kieran Hebden: Actually, I have to do another interview.