CityLife

Little Boots in the Club

YOU NEED HANDS... Little Boots

SHE describes her music as ‘cosmic Coronation Street’, wants to be as famous as Kylie Minogue and can't keep away from Manchester.

Following dates at The Deaf Institute and Night & Day's JD Set shindig, the Blackpool-born disco chanteuse will return here on Wednesday for a date at Club Academy - and if that's not enough, she's also pencilled in for a set at Pride's Big Weekend in August. Phew!

With just two EPs to her name (which, just for the record, is Victoria Hesketh), Little Boots has long been picked out as the sound of 2009 and came second only to the rapidly rising Florence And The Machine in the running for the Critics Choice award at February’s Brits.

She recorded her debut album 'Hands' (due for release on June 9, a May 25 single 'New In Town' is another taster) in ever so cool LA with producer Greg Kurstin – a man who’s had his hands on the creative pallet of Lily Allen, Britney, Ladyhawke, Flaming Lips, Pink, Rachel Stevens, and yes! Even the great Aussie pop pixie herself, Kylie.

It is, though, about time. Music obsessed since the age of five, when she first cut her teeth on a second-hand piano her uncle dragged home from a local pub in Blackpool, Hesketh has tried her hand at life in the fast and slow lanes to fame.

Pop Idol

She once auditioned for Pop Idol, eventually getting booted out in round three because she wasn’t hilarious/mouldable/tear jerking enough (delete as appropriate).

While studying for a undergraduate degree in Leeds (the highlight of which was a thesis on the concept of originality in the music of Jamie Cullum) she fronted electro-poppers Dead Disco, but even that had run its course within three years.

Secretly, then, LB retreated back to the comfort of her bedroom to twiddle with her keyboard collection: Moogs, Korgs, Arp Odysseys, Stylophones, and the instrument that’s come to symbolise her position at the forefront of the shameless tech-geek vanguard, the Tenori-On.

There she seems to have found a natural home and, with a little help from Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard, has turned out some of the greatest synth sounds since Donna Summer’s I Feel Love. The only question, then, is when will you surrender?

Little Boots plays Club Academy with Manc indie-dance upstarts Delphic on Wednesday, May 13. £7.50. Call 0161 832 1111.