Janelle Monáe with Kimbra: The Golden Electric Tour

Pop innovators Janelle Monae and Kimbra are teaming up for ‘The Golden Electric Tour’ next month performing together as well as playing their own headline sets.

The seed for the co-headline tour was planted at the 2012 Montreaux Jazz Festival when Monáe and Kimbra stared the stage, bonded over a shared love of Prince and started an impromptu jam session in their Swiss hotel bar. Monáe visited Sydney in 2012 for an exclusive performance at the Vivid LIVE festival but the Golden Electric Tour will mark her first run of dates in Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth.

Monáe’s new album The Electric Lady continues the futuristic themes of her 2010 debut The ArchAndroid with a dazzling mix of funk, soul, jazz, and pop plus cameos from Prince, Erykah Badu, Solange, Miguel, and Esperanza Spalding. The Electric Lady scored a 9/10 review from FL’s Lachlan Kanoniuk and was rated as one the best album of 2013 by Prince.

Kimbra is set to release the followup to her 2011 album Vows later this year. The album is set to feature collaborations with Daniel Johns, Van Dyke Parks, Thundercat, Bilal, Mark Foster, John Legend, Matt Bellamy and members of The Mars Volta and Dillinger Escape Plan. During an in-depth interview with FL last year Kimbra spoke about the impressive list of collaborators, her experimental approach to music, the album’s “prog-pop” sound. Read the full interview here.

Janelle Monáe with Kimbra: ‘The Golden Electric Tour’
Friday, May 16 – Challenge Stadium, Perth
Monday, May 19 – Hordern Pavilion, Sydney
Wednesday, May 21 – Convention Centre, Brisbane
Saturday, May 24 – Vector Arena, Auckland
Monday, May 26 – The Plenary, Melbourne

Tickets On Sale 10am Thursday, April 17

By tom mann - Faster Louder