Ben Howard with very special guest Michael Kiwanuka

In the space of just twelve short months in 2011, Ben inked his record deal, recorded and released his beautiful debut album, Every Kingdom, and soon found his record propelling him into the UK Top 10.

Since then, Every Kingdom has gone on to be Mercury Prize nominated, Ben has performed on Later... with Jools Holland, achieved platinum sales status in U.K and half a million sales worldwide. His follow up release, The Burgh Island E.P, has received a massive reception from both fans and media alike.

Ben has toured relentlessly over the past two years and established himself as one of the most in demand live artists of 2012. Three sold out shows at Brixton Academy and over 50,000 tickets sold for his most recent tour are testament to this. In his most recent tours every single show sold out and yet more tours were added and upgraded. Not just in the U.K but also across Europe and America.

Every Kingdom had its U.S release in April 2012 and since the then Ben has toured across the country in VW campervans with his Communion label mates, wowed fans and media in a converted church at SXSW and performed critically acclaimed live shows across the country.

The core UK surf scene were the first to take Ben under their wing, and were fiercely passionate about promoting him wherever they could. When it came to focusing on this debut record, Ben shirked any outside influence or label financed gloss. Every Kingdom was recorded in India’s mum’s barn, and is produced by drummer, Chris. "Nobody knows the music like we do. Chris is brilliant at capturing a mood and an atmosphere so we kept close to what we know so well. I am really proud that we did." muses Ben.

With Michael Kiwanuka, it's all about the voice. A voice that he describes as "hitting straight through to the core" with direct, emotional songs about love, yearning, comfort and belonging. It's a voice that built him a following via MySpace and small London gigs, and led Paul Butler from The Bees to invite him to the band's Isle of Wight studio to lay down these introductory tracks from what promises to be a major new British singer/songwriter. Which makes it all the more strange, really, that what Michael originally set out to be was a session guitarist who maybe wrote the odd song for other people.

Growing up in North London, he struggled at times to see where he fitted in. An avid England and Spurs fan, he found it hard to imagine a day when a name like Kiwanuka could sit comfortably on the back of a football shirt here. Nonetheless, when his parents took him and his brother back to Uganda to visit family, he and his brother were immediately recognised as British tourists. Like most of his schoolmates, he liked bands like Nirvana, Radiohead, Offspring and Blur, but it was only when he discovered that Jimi Hendrix was black that he understood he had a place playing rock guitar.