TO start the New Year in style, Basingstoke Blues Club welcomes back Giles Hedley and The Aviators by popular demand.

They last appeared at the club in March 2014.

Featured three times on Paul Jones's BBC Radio blues show, repeatedly at UK and French blues festivals and at countless blues venues over the last thirty years, Giles Hedley is rightly described by Blues in Britain, the UK's top blues magazine, as a mainstay of British blues.

Giles has been singing and playing roots blues across UK and Europe since the sixties, on bottleneck and lap steel guitars, acoustic and electric, and harmonica - his trademark is simultaneous nose-and-mouth harmonica playing.

He is a regular on blues festival and club circuits in England and the continent, both solo and with The Aviators, has featured repeatedly on national radio in England and France in fact he is, in the words of blues magazine Blues in Britain, " a mainstay of British blues" or as Blues Matters puts it, "one of Britain’s foremost roots and country blues performers". Dazzling, funky, rhythmic interplay is The Aviators' key feature - one of the reasons that it plays as many party gigs as blues festivals!

The Aviators are a funky, danceableroots-blues trio steeped in delta and early Chicago blues.

Earthy slide and steel guitars, a unique harmonica style, a passionate, Wolf-style voice, adventurous bass and drums right up front in the mix create the unmistakeable Aviators sound - quite unlike other British blues bands.

With the inimitable Sam Kelly of Blues in Britain's Hall of Fame on drums, and jazz-funk musician, writer and producer Richard Sadler on upright and guitar basses, dazzling rhythmic interplay is the band's key feature - one of the reasons that it plays as many dance gigs as blues festivals.

See Giles Hedley and the Aviators at the Moose Centre, Churchill Way, Basingstoke, on Saturday, January 10, from 8pm until late.

Non-members are welcome and admission costs £8 on the door. Profits go towards Brain Tumour Research.

For further details, call Rex on 01256 321837 or 07979 422590, or Ted on 01256 324313.