Following a phenomenal Splendour In The Grass appearance earlier this year, delighting the crowd with his smooth acoustic folk and soulful vocals, London’s Michael Kiwanuka is returning to Australia! Performing in Sydney and Melbourne in April 2017, he’ll be armed with his game-changing sophomore album, Love & Hate. Set your alarms and sign up to the Secret Sounds mailing list; pre-sale tickets will go sale on Wednesday 12 October at 9am!

Love & Hate, produced by genre-bursting Gnarls Barkley hit maker Danger Mouse and London-based hip-hop producer Inflo, was released earlier this year to astonishing five star reviews worldwide, a Mercury award nomination and a secure spot at Number 1 in the UK album charts for two weeks.

The album is a fascinatingly assured, resonant body of work; the highly anticipated follow-up from Kiwanuka's acclaimed 2012 debut LP, Home Again. Having introduced himself and that voice to the world in 2011, with the raw soul of single 'Tell Me A Tale', Love & Hate is a record that sounds as though it has been unearthed from a long forgotten studio canister in the seventies, but is permeated with a timelessness that defies any artist of any specific era. The album takes Kiwanuka's smooth folk-soul sound into darker territory. As the Daily Star noted 'it's an intense album that is impossible not to love'.

Michael Kiwanuka won the BBC's Sound of 2012, has been nominated for a UK Mercury Prize twice and has toured with one of the world's greatest voices, Adele. Having previously been compared to the likes of legends Bill Withers and Otis Redding, following the success of his gold-selling debut album Home Again, this time around Kiwanuka struts to a much more psychedelic, freeform beat creating soaring gospel music for the 21st century. Love & Hate is an album that genuinely deserves to be listened to as a body of work, littered with 'strictly headphone moments' that require real attention to the light and shade of its genius.

Earlier this year, Michael Kiwanuka and the legendary Nas collaborated to soundtrack Baz Luhrmann's new Netflix drama series, The Get Down. Nas, the narrator of the series, draped his vocals over two of Kiwanuka's tracks: 'Rule The World' and 'Black Man In A White World' for the show. Australian film director Baz Luhrmann is an avid fan of Kiwanuka's music, inviting him to perform at The Get Down's media launch in London, where he referred to Kiwanuka as a 'genius'.

Michael Kiwanuka is an authentic artist with soul and grit, his beautiful voice and charm will warm all of our souls once more in 2017.