Kylie Minogue’s best records - by which we mean the pop/disco ones, of course - tend to be stuffed with big synth sounds, so getting them right for her live show is crucial. It turns out, though, that the sonic centrepiece of her current Tension tour is a pretty compact keyboard: the UDO Super 6.
Released around five years ago, this 12-voice analogue hybrid has beefy tones to burn, making it the ideal synth to handle the pads, leads, stabs and chords that feature in Kylie’s impressive roster of hits
Standing behind that synth is keyboard player Hazel Mills, who’s previously toured with the likes of Florence + The Machine, Blur’s Dave Rowntree, Goldfrapp, Birdy, and Fraser T. Smith. And in a new video that was filmed pre-show at one of Kylie’s recent dates at London’s O2 Arena, she’s revealed some of the tricks of her gigging trade.
Mills’ rig appears to be impressively small. The Super 6 runs through a couple of pedals - the Eventide H90 Harmonizer and Boss RE-202 Space Echo - and there’s a larger master keyboard below.
In the video, as well as hearing some of Mills’ Super 6 Kylie patches in action we also learn that she uses an expression pedal (mainly to open and close the filter) and has the UDO synth hooked up over MIDI for program change and CC messages that come into play when parameters need to be automated because Mills has “no free hands and feet at the time”.
There’s also MIDI clock, so delays and LFOs are nicely in sync, and the Super 6’s audio output goes through Apple’s MainStage app, which is used to generate that all-important sidechain compression for those pulsing pads.
Kylie’s Tension tour is currently in South America and will conclude in Mexico later this month.
