Little Boots

Little Boots

She hasn’t released an official single yet, she hasn’t shot a video or had lots of radio-play, but one thing is certain, Blackpool lass Little Boots is going to make a splash in 2009.

A self-deprecating geek who dreams about the inner workings of vintage synthesisers; Little Boots is 25 year-old blond Victoria Hesketh.

Recently listed as 35th on the NME’s Cool List for 2009 and subject to numerous interviews where she is hailed as the real deal; she makes glorious electo-pop tunes that have a habit of going round your head for days after you first hear them.

When I meet Little Boots she is on the last date-but-one of her Atomatic Lovers UK tour. She is very small and very down-to-earth. She introduces herself and then finds us a quiet corner to chat as her band sound check.

Formerly of Dead Disco, Boots has been playing music since the age of five (she’s a classically trained pianist) and started writing songs when she was a teenager although she says it took her while to have the confidence to show them to anyone.

“I started song writing when I was 13, but I was very very shy of my songwriting, I would almost get naked in front of a room full of people then play a song, it felt so exposing as a teenager. So I kept them locked away for a long long time.”

“Sometimes just getting to the stage where you’ve got enough confidence in yourself and you trust your intuition and feelings… Now I love song writing, it always has been something I thrive on, I’m in love with melody and obsessed by the tone of the chords and the music and the scales and the shapes of the tracks, I think of music in a really 3D visual way.”

On stage she is accompanied by a Tenori-on; a Japanese gizmo called that makes music geeks go weak at the knees. It is a square machine that looks a bit like a silver Etch-a-Sketch with the screen on the back and the front. The screen is a touch screen on to which you programme notes, rhythms, chords etc by pressing on the screen and it makes pictures as well as music.

Before the record deal Little Boots became a youtube sensation, making her own d-i-y versions of hits like Wiley’s Rolex and Hot Chip’s Ready for the Floor; which she films in her garage or in her bedroom accompanying herself on piano or with the help of her trusty Tenori-on.

Her success has seen her in demand as a DJ in Europe and beyond; “It blows my mind that people in England are getting it so outside of the UK it’s weirder. A lot of it is the power of the internet, blogs and stuff, you don’t know how international you are and then I’ll be DJing in LA and people will come up to me and say “hey little boots, we love your stuff!” she says affecting a half-decent American accent.

“At the beginning I was quite keen on just being the songwriter and taking the back seat and just trying to write for Sugarbabes and stuff and then kind of realised that there was too much of me in them to do that, and people really liked them and the reactions helped me. So at the start of the year I got myself together and set my thing up.”

What’s it like being described as the new Kylie or the future of British pop? Isn’t that a lot of pressure? “It’s scary. I was telling my boyfriend the other day that I don’t know what’s scarier, the fact that it might actually happen, the fact that it won’t or the fact that it will be mediocre and I don’t know what’s scarier out of all of those… We worked it all out and decided that the least scary was success.”

Little Boots is very honest about her sense of ambition. “I don’t give a shit about being called cool. I want to have songs in Woolworths in Blackpool.” It maybe too late for Woolworths but keep an eye on Little Boots; she’s going to be around for a while!