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Palladium formed last September, acquaintances through grueling tours on the session musician circuit. They make music that is epic, joyful and ludicrous, bringing to mind things that you love, and things that might make you feel rather uneasy: Pink Floyd, The Police, Fleetwood Mac's 'Tango In The Night', Steely Dan, Toto, Stevie Wonder, Hall & Oates and The Who in the early 70's. Better still, they wear some of the oddest clothes on earth: tweed jackets, flowery shirts, dangly earrings, bleached hair and golf visors (yep, all at once).

EXCLUSIVE Palladium Spanking New Session

Skip back to September 2006 and Palladium – consisting of Peter, Rufio, Fez and Rocky - are playing their first gig. It's a last-minute arrangement so the band makes up for the fact they've never played together by dressing as Peter Pan in drag! A few months later, and they had transformed into a well-oiled, synth-laden stadium pop machine. Virgin snapped them up instantly.

In any normal band, Peter – an androgynous frontman with a penchant for sparkly shoes and gold chains – would stand out as a flamboyant character. Growing up in Yorkshire, Leicester and Essex, he was raised on his Dad’s music collection and swiftly developed a fondness for Swedish prog group Focus and, umm, playing the cornet. Realising that there aren’t many Essex prog acts with vacancies for cornet players, Peter escaped to London, using a place at music college as a front for his chance to play in bands on the London gig circuit.

In Palladium, though, he’s one of four frighteningly unique personalities. On guitar you have Rostaz Fez, a 19 year old guitar genius from Hackney who spent his childhood trying to match Hendrix. He wears aviator shades, plays guitar solos at 2,554,327 miles per hour and will be a cult hero by this time next year. Then there's Rocky – maybe the only Rocky to have sprung from a tiny Welsh town outside Cardiff – who spent his childhood failing school exams because he was too busy bashing drums. Completing the set is Rufio, 21, the son of an eccentric portrait painter who wears a golf visor onstage because "playing so many different keyboards at one time has a sporting element to it".

Palladium's Official Site
Palladium's Myspace
Palladium's Bebo Site

Spanking New 08 Top 10
Number 8 >