RECORD OF THE YEAR: OutKast are all well and good, but we're not ashamed to admit that all the hippin' and a-hoppin' and the bippin' and a-boppin' says nothing to us about our lives. Whereas an insanely prolific, remarkably witty bespectacled thirtysometh

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POP: British Pop, POP: Quirky



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Since MJ Hibbett & The Validators formed in 1998 they've had a Record Of The Year in Rolling Stone, performed live on BBC national radio, toured the country, and had over two million people download one of their songs.

MJ recruited Tim Pattison, formerly of indie rock legends Prolapse, on drums and Frankie Machine on bass to record the single Born With The Century and they enjoyed it so much they then recorded a whole album, Say It With Words (released in 2000). They were joined for this by Tom McClure on violin and then, a year later, by Emma Pattison on backing vocals. Emma's first 'gig' with the group was at her own wedding, singing a song she and MJ had written as a surprise for her husband Tim.

This line-up's first release was the Milk & Baubles EP in 2001. Its lead track Easily Impressed was played on Radio 1 and became a mainstay of the live set. They spent the next two years recording their second album, This Is Not A Library, which was named 'Record Of The Year' in 2003 by Rolling Stone's Well Hung At Dawn team and was played heavily on Steve Lamacq's BBC 6Music shows.

In 2004 Rob Manuel of cult internet site b3ta.com created a flash animation of the band's song Hey Hey 16K, about the legacy of 1980's home computers. It became a massive hit - over a million people downloaded the song in the first week alone, making it the fifth most popular download in the whole world. The song became an international phenomenon, was featured on television and in print all over the world, covered by Canadian Mounties and Norwegian schoolchildren, and led to a range of highly popular t-shirts.

Later that year the band released the Shed Anthems EP featuring The Fair Play Trophy (Again). Steve Lamacq invited MJ to become his show's European Football Championship correspondent, and so for the duration of the competition he performed a completely new version of the song live on the show each week. At Christmas he returned to the show again to perform The Advent Calendar Of FACT, a new song written for the occasion.

The new year began with the release of Warriors Of Nanpantan a 'Rest Of' compilation of deleted singles, compilation tracks and previously unreleased material. MJ and the band toured extensively all over the UK to promote it, and recorded sessions for the BBC' s Raw Talent show, Marcelle Van Hoof's Another Nice Mess in The Netherlands and, yet again, for Steve Lamacq on 6 Music.

In the summer they took time off to spend a week in Cornwall recording their third album, A Fridge Full Of Nice Things, which is currently being mixed. The band are all excited by the fourteen new songs recorded, which have a much more cohesive, confident sound than before. In the meantime MJ has also recorded a live album of his solo material, The Uberset, which is available from him at gigs.