Pianobook is full of surprises – just like this one. I’ve loved the idea and the mysterious, somehow primitive quality of the kalimba since playing around with one in the west London flat I inhabited for part of the 1980s. I never tried recording it and this is the first time I’ve attempted to use one on as the central element of a composition. I was surprised by how much personality Liam’s Kalimba Collection has. I found the coconut variety most difficult to use but it may only be that the amplified version better suited the piece I was recording. For most of my pianobook demos I’m composing while recording, to find out what the instrument itself suggests musically, and that was certainly the case here. The kalimba felt very organic next to the other instruments I used in the sense that the sounds felt strangely tactile to me. But you know what they say: Writing about music is like dancing about architecture… Thanks, Liam – your kalimbas didn’t quite get me dancing but they did get me thinking.