First tour takes Liimo North

BELLADRUM Tartan Heart Festival launches its first Belladrum On The Road tour featuring emerging Edinburgh/London pop trio Liimo and Highland soul pop artist Tamzene.

Liimo released their debut single Pineapple Radio in December last year, a sunny, retro-sounding track that majors on feelgood and smooth, sophisticated sounds.

The three-piece Kieran, CJ and Jamo – all from Edinburgh – have been working on their music for a long time before coming to their current, distinctive sound.

As Kieran explains, it comes from aspiration.

“Everyone deserves a 'little more'!” he laughed explaining the band’s name, a play on the phrase. “Liimo, when we started writing, it was just all about the dreams that CJ, Jaymo and I have together. We took those aspirations and put them into our music and transported it to an ideal setting. We are all city boys by nature, but big city life can be stressful, isolating and people are low on money.

“Good things are hard to come by and I think it is about savouring the moment – and that is what Liimo is all about.”

Kieran O’Brien, CJ Paterson and Jamo Robertson released their follow-up to Pineapple Radio – Get Weird – earlier this month. Though it is only their second release, they have already managed to firmly define their sound with the sparkling, RnB-flavoured track that also proves authenticity is more than just a buzzword for them.

As lead singer Kieran put it: “There needs to be a whole vibe and belief in what you're doing, but that spans more than music. It's about the aesthetic, how you act, what you say, everything."

Anyone who stops off to see their recent YouTube live track from a London rooftop can see that immediately. Any fear that the sound and the ‘vibe and belief’ – and the atmosphere and style they create in everything from the look of their artwork to how they dress – can only be reproduced in a studio or on a page, is quashed.

Box-fresh, the guys look and sound the real deal.

Though the three Highland dates this weekend will be Liimo’s first live gigs out of Edinburgh, they are

And the good news is they are making waves both at home and much further afield.

Kieran laughed when asked about a recent tweet revealing a stranger had come up to him in his local Tesco and said “Get Weird!”, the title of the current single.

But the band have just sent their first T-shirt merch to America. And they have been creating a stir in Japan.

“We talk about finding our audience, in 100 per cent of people, 40 will hate you, 30 won’t care, but you have 30 per cent who like your music and it's about finding them and building on that.

“Our most listened-to city right now is Tokyo,” said Kieran. “But we will go to Wick, Inverness and Aviemore first – we’re not quite ready to go for Tokyo yet!

“But it’s so gratifying when people so far away are buying your T-shirt. I think it means you are doing something right.

“And being recognised in Tesco, it’s amazing to have people buying T-shirts overseas and listening far away, but it’s brilliant to meet a fan face-to-face when you are not expecting it at all, at such an early stage in Liimo’s journey .To have someone come up to you and say ‘I’m a fan of your music’, that’s incredible.

“Who knows, with these Highland shows coming up and the more songs we release, hopefully we will meet some more along the way.”

Liimo and Tamzene go to: Black Stairs, Wick, on Friday, May 24; Inverness Tooth and Claw, Inverness, on Saturday, May 25; the Old Bridge Inn, Aviemore, on Sunday, May 26.