Aiden Grimshaw announces tour dates!

With his excellent debut single Is This Love breaking its way into the Top 40, X Factor standout Aiden Grimshaw is fast on his way to establishing himself as one of the UK’s most exciting new male solo talents. With the kind of critical praise rarely afforded to the progeny of the ITV ratings juggernaut, Aiden is proving to be quite the dark horse, and going by the strikingly individual, beautifully crystalline synth-sounds of Is This Love, both his upcoming album Misty Eye and his tour look set to be a real treat.

Tickets for the tour go on sale this Friday (15^th), so if you fancy catching him live, be up bright and early at 9am to book tickets. Aiden’s UK-wide tour encompasses the following dates:

SEPTEMBER

19           Bristol O2 Academy 2

20           Nottingham Rescue Rooms

22           Northampton Roadmender

23           Bournemouth The Old Firestation

24           Brighton Concorde 2

26           Birmingham O2 Academy 2

27           Glasgow King Tuts

28           Leeds Cockpit

30           Manchester Academy 3

OCTOBER

01           Oxford Academy 2

02           London Scala

Aiden Grimshaw - Is This Love

Right from the outset, Aiden Grimshaw established himself as one of the most interesting contestants ever to grace the X Factor. With his moody, sometimes overbearingly theatrical demeanour and performances, it always felt like he was underserved a little by what the X Factor could offer him. He was certainly never going to win, no, he was too much of an acquired taste for that. He was too much an undefined quantity - you just know that if he had gone on to win he'd have been morphed into a formless Joe McElderry clone and have descended into z-list-dom less than a year later.

But life post-X Factor throws up some fascinating surprises, and one of them is Aiden's actual debut single; a synth-tastic journey into dream-kissed airy pop heaven. It's like Frankmusik rebooted for 2012 pop market, laced with dub-step beats, 80s gloss and vocals that really capture a sense of who Aiden is as both person and potential star. It's a clever move too, with all the shiny pop appeal to grab hearts and minds of a horde of teen girls, but the trendy dance credibility to make its own way into clubland domination.

So, with fingers in both domains, Aiden has recast himself as quite the aspiring dance-pop prince, and it's a look that suits. Is This Love is a terrific debut, and if the rest of his album is as good as this, it could land itself up there with Rebecca Ferguson's Heaven as one of the best LP's ever produced from the ITV ratings giant.

Listen to Is This Love HERE.