News
London band Imperial Leisure is on the Road to V...
22/05/2008
Virgin Mobile’s Road to V in partnership with Sony Ericsson
London band, Imperial Leisure, have landed themselves a sought-after place in the final 14 of Virgin Mobile’s Road to V competition in partnership with Sony Ericcson. Nearly 2,500 bands applied for the annual unsigned talent search – the prize? Opening the V Festival in Stafford and Chelmsford on August 16th and 17th, playing to an audience of thousands and treading the boards with the likes of Muse, The Verve, Kings of Leon, Stereophonics, Kaiser Chiefs, The Prodigy and The Kooks.
Imperial Leisure – a phenomenal ten piece band consisting of a live brass section, keyboards, DJ, two MC’s and a singer, play a blend of hip-hop, ska and rock, -they are set to drum up a storm in this years ‘Road to V’ competition. Playing from the back of their van all over the UK - beaches, shopping centres and car parks they have built up a masive fan base, with their music taking inspiration from The Prodigy and The Madness. They have supported Roots Manuva and their debut single ‘In a Letter’ sold out on the day of release. Imperial Leisure are set for success with their energetic raucous sounds, checkout ther profile on http://www.roadtov.com/profile/52196.
Imperial Leisure are now set to perform live at the south of England Road to V gig, filmed by Channel 4, at the Carling Academy Islington on Tuesday 13th May. Virgin Mobile are laying on coaches for their fans, so that they can travel to the gig for free and give them all the support they need. They’ll be playing in front of an expert panel including ex-Libertine and now Dirty Pretty Things frontman Carl Bârat, NME’s Mark Beaumont as well as key industry experts, who will be critiquing the acts and making their recommendations as to which bands will get to open the V Festival this summer.
Each gig will be broadcast this summer on Channel 4 from June and the expert panel will then decide who wins with the help of viewer reviews – the winning bands then get the chance of a lifetime to open one of the UK’s biggest festivals. To get free tickets to the Road to V gigs at Carling Academy Islington on the 13th ,14th & 15th May all you have to do is text Road to V the date you’d like to attend and the number of tickets (between 2- 4). So if you fancy going on May 13th text 13x2 to 80310. The Road to V cameras will be asking for your reviews so you could even end up on TV. What’s more, the nice people at Virgin Mobile are giving Virgin Mobile customers, who attend the gigs – two free beers on the night.
Since 2004, Road to V has nurtured great new talent, with bands such as The Young Knives, Bombay Bicycle Club and The Brightlights all opening the festival and going on to major successes with Mercury Prize nominations and film careers.
You can keep up with the competition on www.roadtov.com, where there will be exclusive backstage footage, music downloads, message-boards, forums and interviews with the bands. If you’ve got Virgin Media at home, then the super-fast broadband connection will get you there even quicker. Staying with Virgin Media, if you’re a total music fan, you can check out the last four years of Road to V at Virgin TV Music on Demand - channel 300 for those in the know and Virgin customers.
Even on the road you can download all the cool stuff, as Sony Ericsson, following on the success of last year, are Virgin Mobile’s official partner for Road to V and official handset partner at V Festival. Simply click onto Virgin Mobile Bites on your Sony Ericsson handset and enter a world of music on the move.
Rosie Newey, head of music sponsorship at Virgin Media said, “The standard of entries to this year’s Road to V was incredible, the fourteen finalists all have a great sound, we’re really impressed. We’ll just have to wait and see who the fortunate two are – I wish Imperial Leisure all the best of luck.”
AJ, guitarist of Imperial Leisure comments “We’re really chuffed to have got through to the final 14, and looking forward to the gig on Tuesday May 13th, it’s amazing that it is going to be broadcast on channel four, it’s sure to make our mums proud.”
-Ends-
For further information, demo CD and interview requests please contact:
Jonny Lockwood at Eulogy! on: 0207 927 9999 or Jonny@eulogy.co.uk
High resolution band images are available.
Notes to Editors
Imperial Leisure
- Imperial Leisure are a 10 piece band playing a blend of hip-hop, ska and rock music.
- They consist of a live brass section, keyboards, DJ, two MC’s and a singer.
- They have all been friends since secondary school in North London.
- The band have been playing together for approximately 10 years.
- Crucible Management came across the band in 2006 when they had a rehearsal space in the same office block.
- Crucible Management spent approximately one year organising the bands and helping them improve their sound, by playing small gigs over the UK.
- The Bands perform in guerrilla gigs – they pile into a van with all their equipment and play in shopping centres, car parks etc.
- They have built up a massive fan base from the guerrilla gigs.
- Footage of the guerrilla activity was broadcast live on ITN before Christmas.
- In 2007 Imperial Leisure played The Secret Garden party, Exeter Respect, Blissfields and the Brick Lane festival.
- November 2007 – Imperial Leisure supported US hip-hoppers Ugly Duckling on 14 dates.
- Recent support acts have included Roots Manuva and Gym Class Heroes.
- They had a sell out at their recent London forum show with the legendary Sugar Hill Gang, The Beat, Sway, Skinnyman and a reunion with Ugly Duckling.
- Debut single ‘In a letter’ sold out on the day of their release.
- In a Letter and follow-up record Man on the street got playlist by Colin Murray at Radio 1, XFM in London, Manchester and Cardiff and Virgin Xtreme and Kerrang.
- The band have a huge presence on My Space - featured twice as My Space featured artists and featured in ‘cool new video’ section.
- Imperial Leisure has been recording with Russ Keffert aka Junk Scientist. Their next single will be out in July 2008.
- Imperial Leisure’s album release is due to be released in September 2008.
The V Festival
V Festival is now in its 12th year and was the first UK festival to operate over two days and swap line-ups overnight. Since 96, some of the world’s greatest performers have graced the stages including Radiohead, Morrissey, The Strokes, Coldplay, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Blur, Faithless, Razorlight and Kylie.
Virgin Mobile
At Virgin Mobile we love music. A lot of people might bandy around the word “love”, but we really do mean it… and we’ve got the goods to back it up!
Music is at the heart of what we’re about, and it’s what our customers love too. That’s why we put our money where our mouth is and get involved by supporting a whole host of live music events… from small, intimate gigs and grass roots talent competitions, right up to V Festival.
We’re proud to be the telecoms sponsor of the Academy Music Group (AMG) – the UK’s leading owner and operator of live music and club venues, with a network that attracts over three million gig-goers every year.
Carling Academy Brixton, AMG’s legendary south London venue, has scooped NME Best Venue 2007, Vodafone Live Music Awards Best Live Music Venue 2006 and the Time Out Venue of the Year 2004.
And, how could we forget the award winning* V Festival? Virgin Mobile is about to take on its ninth year of sponsoring the world-famous weekender, and it’s getting better all the time. We have an army of Virgin Mobile Angels who help lug your beers to your tent (and will even put it up for you). We let all festival goers (no matter what network they’re on) charge up their phones at our recharge points and we even dish out free line-up info via Bluetooth.
But that’s not all, Virgin Mobile’s Road to V in partnership with Sony Ericsson is back in 2008 and for the fifth year running we’re giving two lucky bands the chance to open the V Festival.
A bit more about Virgin Mobile…
Virgin Mobile is the UK’s largest mobile virtual network operator and uses T-Mobile's network. Since its launch in November 1999, Virgin Mobile has attracted more than four million customers. Virgin Mobile is part of the Virgin Media group. The group is the first to be able to offer `quadruple play’ to customers: mobile, phone, broadband and TV.
Virgin Mobile is part of Virgin Media – the UK’s leading entertainment and communications company. Virgin Media is the UK’s only provider of quad play services – superfast broadband, digital and on-demand TV, home phone and mobile. As the UK’s largest residential broadband provider, it currently offers first-class broadband speeds of up to 20Mb (with plans to roll-out a 50Mb service later this year). Plus, Virgin Media has the most advanced TV on demand service, with over 1,000 music videos and over 500 movies available to its customers.
* V Festival was winner of Best Festival Line-up at the 2007 UK Festival Awards
Virgin Media
Virgin Media is an innovative and pioneering UK entertainment and communications business. For the first time consumers can get everything they need from one company - the UK's only quad play of TV, broadband, phone and mobile plus the most advanced TV on demand service available, the UK’s first high definition TV service and V+, our high specification personal video recorder. We're the UK’s largest residential broadband provider, the largest virtual mobile network operator and the second largest provider of pay TV and home phone.
Virgin Media owns two content businesses - Virgin Media Television (VMTV) and sit-up. VMTV owns seven entertainment channels – Virgin1, Living, Living 2, Bravo, Bravo 2, Challenge and Trouble - and is a 50% partner in UKTV which consists of nine channels including Dave, UKTV Gold and UKTV History. Sit-up runs retail TV channels bid tv, price-drop tv and speed auction tv.
Virgin Media is the largest Virgin company in the world and has almost 10 million customers. To find out more visit www.virginmedia.com/presscentre.
Sony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications was established as a 50:50 joint venture by Sony and Ericsson in October 2001, with global corporate functions located in London. The company serves the worldwide communications market with innovative and feature-rich mobile phones, accessories and PC-cards, and it has R&D sites in Europe, Japan, China, India and America. Sony Ericsson is the title sponsor of the Women's Tennis Association, and works with the Association to promote the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour in over 80 cities during the year. For more information, please visit www.sonyericsson.com
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