September 2012 For immediate release

Graduates nominated for a MOBO award

Two Leeds Metropolitan music graduates are in the running for a MOBO music award.

Former students, Piers Aggett and Kesi Dryden who make up half of the production outfit Rudimental, stormed to the top of the UK charts earlier this year with their number one single Feel the Love, featuring John Newman.

The pair, who both graduated from Leeds Metropolitan University in 2008 from the BSc (Hons) Creative Music and Sound Technology course have been shortlisted in the MOBO category of Best Newcomer and are up against the likes of pop star Rita Ora and former X-Factor contestant Misha B. Last years MOBO awards saw superstar Jessie J crowned winner in the same category. The 17th annual MOBO Awards will take place at Liverpools Echo Arena on Saturday 3 November. Voting is now open via the official MOBO website.

Piers commented: "After graduating, I started doing stage and sound work at Hackney Empire and Kesi started working in a school as a learning mentor, also teaching music production. Since we left Leeds Met, we have always been making songs and going to recording studios to record ideas in our free time off work. We networked a lot over the years and built up some good contacts through collaborating with artists and remixing jobs. Also we were involved with an independent label called "black butter" which really gave us a platform for our music and helped us a lot. We are currently working on the

second single and album with the label Asylum/Atlantic and we are also doing lots of gigs over the summer. It is amazing that weve got this far, and we cant wait to release the album."

Ends

For further details please contact Julia Williams in the Communications team at Leeds Met on 0113 812 5978 or email j.t.williams@leedsmet.ac.uk

Notes for editors: Leeds Metropolitan University has over 25,000 students and around 3, 000 staff. The Vice Chancellor of Leeds Metropolitan University is Professor Susan Price and the Chair of the Board is Lord Woolmer of Leeds. Leeds Metropolitans four faculties are: Arts, Environment and Technology, Business & Law, Health and Social Sciences, and Carnegie. Leeds Metropolitans heritage can be traced back to the founding of the Mechanics Institute in Leeds in 1824. International students rated the University top in the UK for language support, accommodation quality and learning spaces in the 2010 Autumn Wave of the International Student Barometer and sixth in the world for the quality of its lectures. We have over 1,500 international students from 122 countries around the globe. The Universitys award-winning learning environments include

Broadcasting Place, which was voted the best tall building in the world in 2010 by the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) and also winner of the 2010 Leeds Architecture Awards New Building category.