6 Music - Music News

The Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti says he is 'nervous', but can’t wait to play their latest batch of songs when they touch down in the UK for RockNess Festival.

It’s just been announced Fatboy Slim, Doves, Ian Brown and Enter Shikari will join them and Leftfield on the bill for the festival, which takes place near Inverness, between 11-13 June.

The festival drew in more than 35,000 music fans in 2009, and when asked about the line-up, Moretti animatedly said: "I’m excited. That’s awesome, Doves are our old pals. I’m going to have a good time saying hello to those guys."

As for getting back out there, he told the BBC: "We're going to rehearse as soon as we get out of the studio. As soon as we're done recording, we're going to go in and practise all those old songs."

"I'm excited. That's awesome, Doves are our old pals. I'm going to have a good time saying hello to those guys."

Fabrizio Moretti

They have another high profile festival date at the Isle of Wight festival the same weekend as RockNess (11-13 June).

"I'm nervous as hell," he said of their live return. "It's giving me butterflies in my stomach. To be honest, I haven't really been thinking about the old songs as we're so into recording these new ones.

"It's less the songs themselves and more the response from the band that I miss terribly. I'm excited."

Moretti also stated the group intend to release their four years in-the-making new album in September.

Despite reports to the contrary, the band are enjoying working together again on the follow-up to 2006's First Impressions Of Earth.

On getting back in the studio, he told Radio 1’s Zane Lowe: "It was really good in fact. We're friends before we are band members, so it's not like we spend too much time away from each other.

"Coming back in and playing music together, it was like riding a bicycle."

The band posted on their official site at the start of February that they have been working with Beck and U2 producer Joe Chiccarelli in New York.

Gus Oberg is engineering the album, which they are recording at New York’s Avatar Studios.