Album Notes

In 2006 MJ Hibbett & The Validators released their third album WE VALIDATE! To uniformly positive reviews. Artrocker called it ‘2006’s most worthwhile album’, The Morning Star said it was ‘a manifesto for living’ and Word Magazine stated ‘MJ Hibbett should be a national institution.’

Steve Lamacq personally invited them to play a live session at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios for his Radio One show. The band spent the rest of the year touring, playing fifty gigs all over the country including an appearance on the main stage at Sheffield’s Fuzztival and their own national tour.

MJ Hibbett & The Validators formed in 1999 to record the single Born With The Century with Frankie Machine on guitar, MJ on bass and Tim Pattison on drums. Tim and MJ knew each other from their time in The Council, a band whose proudest achievement was headlining the Abbey Park Festival. MJ had previously been in Voon, notorious for causing venues to close, PA systems to explode and equipment to collapse every time they played. His account of the time, The Curse Of Voon, was featured in The Melody Maker as a “how not to do it” for other bands. Tim enjoyed rather more success in indie-rock legends Prolapse, touring America several times, releasing albums on Cherry Red and Cooking Vinyl, and playing with both Thurston Moore and Kylie Minogue.

MJ also had a brief solo career which saw him appear on the much sought after Fortuna Pop! EP Work Is A 4 Letter Word. This brought him to the attention of Frankie Machine, a member of White Town whose single Your Woman went to number one, and now a renowned singer songwriter in his own right. Together the pair decided to found the label Artists Against Success to release their own records, along the way discovering talents such as Plans & Apologies, Johnny Domino, Saloon and The Chemistry Experiment.

Their first album Say It With Words was released in 2000 featuring several friends from the Leicester music scene, most notably Tom McClure, a violinist who was working with groups such as Lazarus Clamp and Airport Girl as well as being a member of the Leicester Symphony Orchestra. Other Validators came and went until the line-up solidified in time for 2001’s Milk & Baubles EP with Emma Pattison joining on backing vocals - her first gig with the band was at her wedding when MJ backed her singing a surprise song for her husband Tim.

With Frankie and MJ swapping instruments they spent the next two years recording their second album This Is Not A Library, which was named 'Record Of The Year 2003’ by Rolling Stone's Well Hung At Dawn team. The Shed Anthems EP followed the next summer, featuring the band’s football anthem The Fair Play Trophy (Again). Steve Lamacq invited MJ to become his show's European Football Championship correspondent and for the duration of the competition he performed a completely new version of the song live on air each week. At Christmas he returned to perform The Advent Calendar Of FACT, a new song written for the occasion.

That same year Rob Manuel of cult internet site b3ta.com created a flash animation of the band's song Hey Hey 16K. It was downloaded by over a million people during the first week alone, making it the fifth most popular download in the whole world. It became an international phenomenon on television and in print, was performed by Canadian Mounties and Norwegian schoolchildren, and generated a range of hugely popular t-shirts. In 2005 The Validators released Warriors Of Nanpantan, a 'Rest Of' compilation full of rare tracks and previously unreleased material, whilst MJ also released The Uberset, a solo live album which he toured extensively, including performances in Ireland, Spain and America. At one of these gigs he was approached by a major publishing house to write his rock memoirs, which he is currently working on.

Next for the band is the release of double A-Side single featuring The Lesson Of The Smiths and The Gay Train, which will be accompanied by a new video once again directed by Rob Manuel.