“Seeing Years & Years live last year was probably the best surprise of 2013. Young Olly Alexander has the holy fire in his hands: a soulful voice with a crazy R’n’B vibe, which enables him to be simultaneously emotional and groovy. Going to a Years & Years gig is to experience a wide range of feelings, from joy and euphoria, to melancholia and tears.”
These words from Christophe Abric, founder of La Blogothèque, are typical of the reviews and comments circulating on London based electric soul three-piece band Years & Years. If you’re intrigued, you now have a chance to go and hear them for yourselves, because the band is playing an exclusive acoustic session in London’s abandoned Aldwych Underground station on Monday 19th May. They’ll headline the second installment of the 2014 Lumia Live Sessions (LLS), which is happening in front of an intimate crowd in this unusual venue.
The emerging group is fronted by former “Skins” actor and pianist Olly Alexander, who comes from a classicist musical upbringing. The group’s two other members are bassist Mikey Goldsworthy and synth player/beat-maker Emre Turkmen.
The LLS are a celebration of Nokia’s love of music discovery, bringing to life the essence of its free music streaming service, Nokia MixRadio. MixRadio is the number one music streaming service for commuters, with its offline capabilities ensuring you can listen to your favorite music, for free, when you have no signal or WiFi. The service enables music fans to make four mixes available offline, equating to over two hours of completely free listening.
The underground location of this session reflects the unique offline capabilities of Nokia’s MixRadio; by enabling users to create and download personalised playlists allowing them to listen underground; music discovery never needs to stop.
LLS is a tour that sees Nokia and music pioneers La Blogothèque, a team of bloggers and videographers famous for helping kick-start the career of scores of musicians globally, team up to showcase the hottest emerging music talent through a series of free gigs in unusual setting across the UK. Years & Years follow the highly successful first session, which took place on 29th March and saw Brit Award winning singer Ella Eyre at Dingles Fairground Museum in Devon.
•Follow the Lumia Live Sessions to discover the new sounds of 2014 at http://www.nokia.com/gb-en/lumialive/ .
•A public competition for tickets can be found here- http://www.nokia.com/gb-en/lumialive/.