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FESTIVAL PREVIEWSFestival Issue 2009
PRIMAVERA May 28-30, Parc del Forum, Barcelona, Spain The festival season has got so fucking long that a late-May festival can no longer even draw the “early” trump card. Luckily, year in, year out, Primavera relies on one of the most solid line-ups in the calender as opposed to gimmicks. My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, Aphex Twin and Spiritualized are all there and that is before you even get to things like Sunn O))) and Shellac on the ATP stage. Plus you get to stay in a real building and have Barcelona on your doorstep for more Estrella, street MDMA and tapas than you can shake a stick at. Ole! Tickets €150 and all other info from primaverasound.com BENICASSIM July 16-19, Benicassim, Spain Benicassim has got to the stage where, for four days, there are more sunburnt, blathering, drunk British people in a single tiny Spanish town than there are in most parts of England. With Oasis headlining the first night you can guarantee that the burnt English flesh to bronzed local skin ratio will soar to an even greater disparity but, if you’re after a summer holiday to go with your Kings Of Leon and Killers then you could do worse than Benicassim. Just be sure to get an apartment with air con. It really is scorchio over there. Tickets through official sources are gone but all other info is at fiberfib.com THE READING AND LEEDS FESTIVAL August 28-30, Richfield Avenue, Reading and Bramham Park, Leeds Onward the behemoth lumbers. A bit like Bernard Matthews’ Turkey Drummers, you always know what you’re going to get with the double-pronged event that used to be known as the Carling Weekend. Leeds is always a little more lads-on-tour compared to Reading’s sea of 14-year-olds baking in the sun, but either way you get the predictable Monkeys/Radiohead/Kings Of Leon stew. Bonus fun comes courtesy of a guess-Chino-Moreno’s-waist-size game during the Deftones and the classic how-many-people-bought-a-blow-up-shark-for-“Terrorshark” when Municipal Waste play the Lock Up stage. Weekend tickets are all gone but there are a few £70 day tickets still around. Those and all other info at readingfestival.com and leedsfestival.com SUPERSONIC July 24-26, The Custard Factory, Birmingham While in the past it has always had line-ups to make your common or garden beard stroke metaller get an instant semi, this year’s Supersonic really has gone full mast. The first ever UK show by Japanese doom legends Corrupted, a rare appearance by vintage horror soundtrack kings Goblin, the reunion of early O’Malley vehicle Thorr’s Hammer and the fucking Accused? See you in Brum. Weekend tickets £75 and info at capsule.org.uk T IN THE PARK July 10-12, Balado, Kinross-shire, Scotland Last year T was one of the funnest festivals I attended. Rain, mud, Super T and the locals’ truly bizarre UK Garage circa 2002 chants of “Here we, here we, here we fucking go” all just seemed to add to the Scotch titan of festivals’ charm. Like just about every other major fest this year, T have gone for the safe Kings/Killers one-two but you also get a reunited Blur, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, the Horrors and Scottish national treasure Edwyn Collins for your buck. Weekend and Saturday tickets are gone but you can still get £60 (Friday) and £72.50 (Sunday) tickets. Those and full info at tinthepark.com GLASTONBURY June 24-28, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Glastonbury One of my friends did classics at Oxford. His third year exams were allegedly second only in impossibility-to-pass-ness to the Chinese Civil Service entrance exam, but even he really struggled with the Glasto registration system. If you can make it past that labyrinthine obstacle, you may just have the chance to step onto hallowed Eavis land, and after last year’s rap-based curveball, enjoy a back-to-basics rock’n’roll line-up including Neil Young, the Boss and quite possibly Fleetwood Mac. See if you can make head or tail of the ticketing and get line-up info at glastonburyfestivals.co.uk DOWNLOAD June 12-14, Donington Park, Midlands Everyone is talking about the Faith No More reunion but if you overlook that for a second then it’s the ultimate none-more-rock line-up this year at Donington. Mighty hair-metal icons Whitesnake, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Journey and ZZ Top will all be showing the young whipper-snappers how it was done in their day. Marilyn Manson, Korn and Limp Bizkit take it back to 1998, and you can dig deep for a few Meshuggah and Clutch-shaped gems. Weekend tickets £160 and full line-up at downloadfestival.co.uk SUMMER SUNDAE WEEKENDER August 14-16, DeMontfort Hall, Leicester The East Midlands’ biggest (and quite possibly only) blotch on the festival map returns. Previous years have seen engaging line-ups including the likes of Patti Smith, Echo & the Bunnymen and Spiritualized, and this year continues in a similar spirit with St. Etienne, Bon Iver, Monotonix and Blk Jks, as well as a “Sundae Fringe Festival” off-site. This will be a little like the Edinburgh Fringe with a bunch of stand-up and improv theatre-type stuff—but in Leicester. Tickets are £102 for the weekend and you can get those and all other information at summersundae.com HELLFEST June 19-21, Clisson, France If you are into what happens when hardcore, crust and metal all get into bed and have a huge orgy with spiked dildos then this one is for you. Saint Vitus with Wino, Pentagram, Voivod, Eyehategod, Outlaw Order, Amebix, Electric Wizard, Slapshot... the list goes on and on. We’re all going. See you there. The organisers do a load of package deals to get you there and back home at varying rates. Find out about all that stuff at hellfest.fr GET LOADED IN THE PARK August 30, Clapham Common, London For one day only, this popular cruising patch of grass in south London transforms into a field of dreams. This year’s Get Loaded looks as though it was booked by someone with a real boner for dance music live PAs—which could have spelt a recipe for disaster had they not been canny enough to snatch the UK live debut of Carl Craig’s new-fangled Innerzone Orchestra, a returning Orbital and, er, Roni Size and Reprazent. Tickets are £35. Get those and all information at getloadedinthepark.com SECRET GARDEN PARTY July 23-26, Huntingdon Mill Field, Peterborough Kind of like an adult version of Tubbyland, the Secret Garden is a whimsical, topsy-turvy neon place where they tell you everything’s going to be fine. I am fairly sure that all of this joviality is a mask for a sinister underbelly but with acts like Au Revoir Simone, Fat Freddy’s Drop and Emiliana Torrini, this theory remains hypothetical. Tickets are £144 including camping and you can get them and all other info from secretgardenparty.com ØYA August 11-15, Gamlebyen, Oslo, Norway Set in a medieval park in Oslo and offering a line-up so diverse it borders on the unhinged—from Enslaved to Magnetic Man to Wilco—there seems no reason why you wouldn’t want to give Øya a go. Apart from Norway being the most expensive country in the world right now, that is. If you’re feeling flush, this is definitely worth a go. Tickets are 615 NOK per day (£60, roughly, which isn’t too bad) and you get those and all the other stuff you need to know at oyafestivalen.com EXIT July 9-12, Petrovaradin Fortress, Novi Sad, Serbia How often do you find yourself in Serbia? Or in a fortress? Highly likely never, we’re guessing. Well, Exit gives you the unique opportunity to remedy that gaping hole in your life. Plus you get to see Patti Smith, Madness, Kraftwerk and dance guys Paul Woolford and Richie Hawtin while you’re at it. Tickets are just £72 for four days. Get them and everything else at exitfest.org LOVEBOX July 18-19, Victoria Park, London Lovebox is Rio de Janiero in Hackney’s Victoria Park for two days only. Duran Duran are sure to draw the Tesco-checkout CD-buying mum brigade but the New York Dolls and Gang of Four will be there pretending the 80s never happened with some punk and post-punk revisionism. The one condition is you have to tolerate Groove Armada because they curate the whole thing, but if the weather doesn’t suck there are worse ways to spend a weekend. Tickets £75 for the weekend and all info from lovebox.net BIG CHILL August 6-9, Eastnor Castle Deer Park, Malvern Hills, Herefordshire The Big Chill is nestled like a three-day oasis of calm in the middle of the more hectic Carling Weekender bender blowout period of mid-August. The festival which sounds like it was named after a Café Del Mar compilation continues to offer refinement and diversity. No bad thing when that means Andrew Bird, Calexico, Lindstrøm, Pharaoh Sanders and a rarer than rare live set from Chris Cunningham—which is reason in itself to make the trip to the Malvern Hills. Weekend tickets are £145 and you can get them and all other information at bigchill.net HOP FARM July 4-5, Paddock Wood, Kent As well as having a name a little like a baddie from the Dean Cain version of Superman, Vince Power is the guy who set up Mean Fiddler so he should know a thing or two about booking shows. That hasn’t stopped him booking the Fratellis, though. But to make up for dropping the ball on that one you also get Echo & the Bunnymen, Heartbreak and Etienne de Crecy in a verdant woodland setting. Tickets are £125 for the weekend or £60 per day. Find out more at hopfarmfestival.com GREEN MAN August 21-23, Glanusk Park, Brecon Beacons, Wales If Green Man was a person it would be Robert Wyatt: slightly old and crotchety but having lived enough to tell tales around the camp fire so enchanting you’d want to listen to them forever. Sure, Wilco, Roky Erickson, the Dirty Three and Jarvis aren’t spring chickens but you still want to see them, right? Animal Collective and Bon Iver supply the youthful support. Tickets won’t break the bank at £115 for the whole weekend and you can get them at thegreenmanfestival.co.uk FIELD DAY August 1, Victoria Park, London The Underage Festival for overage people has slowly cemented itself as a thoughtful, discerning jewel in the capital’s overcrowded festival crown. This year you get Mogwai’s only UK festival appearance, a rare outing for laptop loop guy Fennesz, and a bunch of other stuff that you will actually want to see as opposed to sit in vague earshot of like the Big Pink and Sian Alice Group. Tickets are £29.50 from fielddayfestivals.com UNDERAGE August 2, Victoria Park, London Unless you are 14, 15, 16, 17 or 18 then stop reading this. I bet you are still reading, huh? Well, read all you like but you won’t get in. If you are a teenager or an accomplished fence-scaler you’ll get to see the Horrors, the XX and Pull In Emergency, who are probably younger than most of the audience. Tickets are a pocket-money-friendly £26.50. Fnd out more at underagefestivals.com TRUCK July 25-26, Hill Farm, Steventon, Oxford Oxford’s annual nicer-than-nice knees-up has spawned a mini-empire of spin-off festivals like Harvest and Wood, but Truck remains the place to go if you wear a cardigan and feel like you live in a Belle & Sebastian song. The organisers are keeping up the whole secret-line-up-till-the-last-minute schtick but if you post on the Drowned In Sound forum it’s unlikely you’ll be disappointed. Weekend tickets are £70 and all info from thisistruck.com LOOP July 10-12, Victoria Gardens, Brighton Sidestepping the usual enormofest predictability with those leftfield curveballs that make you go “hmm” has been Loop’s stock-in-trade for a few years now but this summer they’ve really outdone themselves. Squarepusher, the Field, Zomby and a re-energised Juan Maclean are all safe bets and if it’s sunny you can go swim in the sea and eat ice cream with Chris Eubank and Fatboy Slim and whatever else it is people get up to in Brighton. Tickets £65 and all info from loopbrighton.com OFFSET FESTIVAL September 5-6, Hainault Forest, Redbridge A welcome addition to the “is it really still the summer?” fag-end of the season. The Offset Festival is set in a forest but close enough to London that you can get home every night and with a line-up that includes A Certain Ratio, the Slits, the Horrors and a DJ set from the ever-amazing Douglas Hart. With tickets at £45 (excluding camping, but £55 if for some reason you are really into sleeping in tents) it might just be the ultimate festival for people who aren’t really into festivals. More info at offsetfestival.co.uk GARDEN FESTIVAL July 3-12, Petrcane, Croatia Now, I like to party as much as the next guy but nine days? Maybe Croatians only get nine days holiday a year and the whole country goes to Garden Festival? The website’s great, it has loads of features like the “Born Ready?” section, which I think is the FAQ, and the “Festival Vibe Corner”, which told me that Lindstrøm is playing live and there are approximately 3 million DJs playing just about every form of music that it is possible to dance to including Todd Terje, Dissident’s Andy Blake and, inevitably, someone called Kid Bongo. Tickets are £120 and all info at the excellent thegardenfestival.eu RELENTLESS NASS July 10-12, Bath & West Showground, Bath This is a BMX festival so there will be lots of adults with bikes that are way too small for them all over the place but once night falls you’ll get shows from N*E*R*D, Lethal Bizzle and, erm, Camp Kill Yourself. BMX guys must be into drum’n’bass as well because there is a raft of 165bpm DJs playing, including Chase & Status, High Contrast and Shy FX. Weekend tickets are £64.99 and all info from relentlessnass.com RELENTLESS BOARDMASTERS August 5-9, Newquay, Cornwall Relentless have got the extreme-fests on lock. If you are into surfing, Boardmasters is the only weekender for you. Once you’re done frolicking in the sea you can go see Ash, the Streets, SSS and Cypress Hill. Day tickets £29.99 and weekend tickets £89 and all other info that you might need from relentlessboardmasters.com STANDON CALLING July 31-August 2, Standon, Hertfordshire Well-heeled home counties three-dayer Standon Calling returns for its ninth knees-up with an edifyingly eclectic line-up featuring Femi Kuti, Tony Christie, Sun Ra Arkestra, the Invisible and Selfish Cunt, among countless others, plus a stack of spoken word types and DJs entertaining across five stages. This year’s unusual fancy dress theme is the 400th anniversary of Gallileo’s unveiling of the telescope, so wear what you will. When we went two years ago the ecstasy was stronger than the acid, and recommendations don’t come much higher, as it were. Tickets £89 and info from standon-calling.com KENDAL CALLING July 31-August 2, Lowther Deer Park, Penrith, Cumbria The Lake District’s boutique indie-dance event returns for a fourth year in a new location and boasts headline sets from the Streets, the Zutons (remember them?) and Ash (ditto) as well as flashy rave sounds courtesy of Skream, Chase & Status, Stanton Warriors and Krafty Kuts. The pretty surrounding countryside will entice scores of punters, but let’s face it, when you’re chewing your face off in a packed tent to Skream’s remix of “In for the Kill”, you could be anywhere. Tickets £70 and all info from kendalcalling.co.uk GLOBAL GATHERING July 25-27, Long Marston Airfield, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire Old-school UK enormo-rave teeming with dummy-sucking hard-house nitwits who still take everything Mixmag says at face value. The “world of dance” is in a pretty perilous state if the best its beacon event can muster in the way of headliners is the terrible trio of the Prodigy, Pendulum and Orbital (who didn’t have the decency to remain retired), but scrape the surface and you’ll find the likes of Erol, Tiga, Hawtin, Frankmusik (good luck, mate), Rusko, Lisa Pin Up and Lord Carl of Coxfordshire. God bless them all. Tickets £115 and all info from globalgathering.co.uk BILBAO BBK LIVE July 9-11, Recinto Kobetamendi, Bilbao, Spain If you’re in northeastern Spain in early July and have a craving for stadium indie with a gothic slant performed live in front of thousands of people, then you’re literally in the right place. Bilbao BBK Live is a new three-day event boasting acts such as Jane’s Addiction, Depeche Mode, Placebo, Chris Cornell, Primal Scream, Editors and Fischerspooner, so if you take yourself a little too seriously and can still fit into those black PVC trousers, you know where to go. Tickets £126 and all info from bilbaobbklive.com LATITUDE July 16-19, Henham Park Estate, Beccles, Suffolk Will this be the third year in a row we’ve ended our Latitude preview with “Born to be mild? Latitude’s for you”? No, tragically, it won’t. This year’s middle-class jamboree of really pleasant arty stuff takes in all manner of gently leftfield entertainment, including live shows from Pet Shop Boys, Grace Jones, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Spiritualized, Gossip, Doves et al, and maintains its worthy focus on comedy, film, music, cabaret, acoustic sets, and authors reading from their recently published books to a smattering of revellers spannered on pear cider. Top tip for north London burglars: during the Latitude weekend, most houses in Stoke Newington will be empty. Tickets £150 and all info from latitudefestivcal.co.uk SÓNAR June 18-20, Barcelona, Spain Ancient techno bros Orbital headline their umpteenth festival this summer in what appears to be an uninspired booking by the traditionally on-it Sónar selectors. By way of compensation, they’re offering ticket-holders a spectacular survey of synth-pop in 2009 starring La Roux, Little Boots, Heartbreak, Crystal Castles, Fever Ray and Late Of The Pier, so let’s see how that goes down. Then there’s Animal Collective, Grace Jones, bearded wonder Vincent Gallo (as part of something called RRIICCEE), and some hot disco action in the form of LCD duo James Murphy and Pat Mahoney, and Erol Alkan’s Disco 3000 project. Factor in the numerous off-Sónar parties at clubs like Razzmatazz and Nitsa, the beach, the sunshine, the tapas and the MDMA, and you have one hell of a weekend ahead of you. Tickets from €30 and all info from sonar.es BLOOM August 14-16, West Littleton Down, Gloucestershire The self-styled “ultimate house party in a field” (albeit a houe party that costs £75) moves to a new setting near Bristol this year, where you’ll encounter the likes of reggae fruitcake Finley Quaye, Scratch Perverts, Filthy Dukes, Chrome Hoof, the Whip and Drums of Death. Bloom is a low-key affair and some say it’s a hidden gem. Not us, mind, because we’ve not been. Tickets £75 and all info from bloomfestival.com BESTIVAL September 11-13, Robin Hill Country Park, Downend, Isle of Wight Bestival sucked hard last year when the rains transformed the sloping site into a slurry pit full of miserable, monged-out revellers inappropriately dressed as happy starfish. Hopefully the organisers will have made provision for inclement weather this year, because mud is no friend of hard electronic beats and euphoric indie-dance. Topping the bill are Kraftwerk, which is a genuine coup for Rob da Bank, as well as Massive Attack and Elbow, but as usual there’s stacks of decent acts on site including Klaxons, MGMT, the Horrors, Squarepusher, Doves and Michael Nyman. Then there’s the pretty much compulsory fancy dress (space is the theme), wigwams, expensive food, creepy happy-clappy hippy vibe and general freestyle insanity of it all. Just remember: you don’t have to be mad to go to Bestival – but it helps! Tickets £140 and all info from bestival.net V FESTIVAL August 22-23, Hylands Park, Chelmsford and Weston Park, Staffordshire Alas, this baby is sold out, so it looks like your dream of seeing classic acts such as the Killers, Oasis and Snow Patrol will have to wait one more year. Not much else to say about V, which is not so much a festival as a ruthless branding exercise devised by teams of glassy-eyed marketing executives researching youth demographics, except that they do book some passable bands amid the drivel, and Dizzee Rascal’s playing and he’ll definitely do “Bonkers” and Lady Gaga will do “Poker Face” so, you know, things could be worse. Sold out but all info anyway from vfestival.com ELECTRIC ELEPHANT August 28-30, Petrcane, Croatia This is an old-fashioned three-day disco rave-up in the tiny Croatian fishing village of Petrcane, organised by the muso hedonists who run those Electric Chair parties in Manchester (but don’t let that put you off). The DJ-centric line-up is highly beardy and Balearic—guests include Theo Parrish, Andrew Weatherall, Disco Bloodbath, Idjut Boys and Horse Meat Disco—but the idyllic location, affordable tickets, lovely weather and tremendous hospitality make it one of the season’s unmissable events. If you like disco, that is. Tickets £69.99 and all other travel info from electricelephant.co.uk GLADE July 16-19, Matterley Bowl, Winchester, Hampshire Full-on psytrance 72-hour ketamine bender Glade shifts west to a new site, the one that used to host ye olde Homelands raves. This year’s party is probably the same as last year’s, with the same acts playing in a different order, and to be honest, if you’re going, you’ll probably be too fucked to notice. Anyway, Underworld, Booka Shade and Squarepusher headline, ably assisted by acts like Kid 606, Venetian Snares, Dave Clarke and Hudson Mohawke. You know the score by now, and you also know it takes a week to fully recover from Glade. Get on one. Tickets £125 and all info from gladefestival.com HARD ROCK CALLING June 26-28, Hyde Park, London Anyone in London wanting to catch Bruce Springsteen play his famous songs from the 80s should head to Hyde Park on the Sunday when the Boss closes this restaurant-sponsored addition to the capital’s festival calendar. Neil Young takes charge on the Saturday and again, hopefully he’ll be playing his old songs too because his new ones are rotten. Armed with lukewarm indie, the Killers and the Kooks manfully aim to fill London’s largest central park on the Friday. VIP tickets for these events cost a recession-mauling £265, by the way. Otherwise, tickets £45 and all other info from hardrockcalling.co.uk SERPENTINE SESSIONS June 29-July 1, Hyde Park, London Feeling lonely and left out? Aren’t we all. So join the club and let’s hang out down the front for Bon Iver at this midsummer soiree in Hyde Park. Serpentine Sessions is Live Nation’s idea of a boutique event and the mature line-up offers Tindersticks, Big Star, Regina Spektor (can anyone name one of her songs, by the way?) and something called It Hugs Back. The worst kind of indie—folky and earnest—in other words, and the place will be crawling with music journalists boring each other with tales of recent Glasto excess. Tickets £25 from serpentinesessions.com VICE STAFF
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