Constellations Festival 2011, Leeds

Constellations 2011

By Russell Warfield

November 12, 2011

This year’s Constellations Festival was a double-decker treat for me. Not only was it a second straight year of excellent music at Leeds University Union (and only the second year in total, to boot), but it was also the first time that I managed to get back oop n’rth after graduating from the university earlier this year. Gorgeously decorated stages aside, it was a joy to roam around the place, enjoying performances, supping on pints which didn’t require me to sell a kidney to purchase. (Note to self: don’t just turn this into a review of how much you love Leeds) … Continue Reading

Preview: Supersonic 2011

Supersonic 2011

You’d be forgiven to believe that now the summer is over that so was the festival season. However you’d be wrong. Capsule’s Supersonic festival in Birmingham’s Custard Factory is an onslaught of extreme, experimental, noise, electronic and rock music, and one that will have any avante garde fan frothing at the mouth.

This year is Supersonic’s 9th invasion of the Custard Factory and has become the one of the most important events in every open minded music fan’s calendar. What sets it apart from many UK festivals is not only its genre bending line-ups where you can find anything from black metal to industrial noise but the workshops and films it provides alongside this. … Continue Reading

Standon Calling 2011

By Russell Warfield

You’re probably tired of reading that it’s been A Bad Year for festivals, but Standon Calling have had a uniquely rocky twelve months. As bad as it might be to undersell your tickets by a significant margin a la Reading or Leeds, it’s almost unarguably worse to have to firefight the public discovery that the festival’s director had been funding his project through hundreds of thousands of pounds of embezzled money; an act which has wound him up in jail. … Continue Reading

Muso’s Guide at Leopallooza

Leopallooza, by Hannah Wheeler (Daisyrock Photography)

Tucked away in The Wydes of North Cornwall, last weekend hosted one of the UK’s cutest festivals. Leopallooza is only in its 6th year but is growing each year – over 4,000 fans gathered into the usually sheep inhabited field for its two day event this year. … Continue Reading

ATP Curated by Animal Collective – Butlins, Minehead

13-15 May, 2011

We live in hard times, friends. Not hard like it was back in the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s obviously, or even the early 80s of course but you know, bread is pricey these days, so pretty damn hard. The enforced economic cutbacks are far reaching and have inevitably spread to everyone’s favourite indie-cred festival, ATP. Now down to just one May festival from the previous years’ 2, one will become none in 2012 due to a big dip in ticket sales caused by all manner of possible reasons; a perceived lack of quality in the curators and invitees of recent years, too much choice in the festival peak season, general overkill and that phrase much used of late: ‘tightening of the belt’. … Continue Reading

Honeyfest 2011

16 April, 2011

It is fitting that on the weekend of the FA Cup Semi-Finals the Pewsey locals hanging on the boughs of branches on the other side of the fence to hear some of the acts at the inaugural Honeyfest remind us of those doing the same at the famous Hereford vs. Newcastle game some 39 years ago. … Continue Reading

The National, Sharon van Etten, Efterklang, Cross-Linx, Eindhoven

February 18, 2011

If you had come in near the end of the headline gig by The National and asked, “Blimey, where is the singer?” someone probably would’ve pointed somewhere at the ceiling. Because high up is Matt Berninger, on the balcony, shouting out “I won’t fuck you over, I’m Mr. November” (which added a layer during the Obama–McCain elections and arguably got another layer added to it now that his first presidential term is winding down). On the stage the band is playing Alligator closer ‘Mr. November’ sans Padma Newsome (the Australian hasn’t come along for this leg of the tour apparently) but with Owen Pallett taking over selected violin duties. How Berninger got there (over the chairs) and why he got there (to sing his heart out yet again) seems to have made way for the more immediate question of “How do I get down on that stage again to finish the last two songs?” … Continue Reading

End Of the Road Festival, Larmer Tree Gardens, North Dorset

End of the Road Festival

September 10-12, 2010

The natural post-festival chat which keeps revellers awake on their long journeys home invariably revolves around the pros and cons of the festival. It’s telling that the worst we could come up with on our drive home from End of the Road was that it rained for a while on Saturday morning. The organisers seem to have gone out their way to improve every facet of this cosy festival but even they can’t do anything about the great British “summer”. With the cons so easily dealt with, what of the pros? … Continue Reading

Green Man Festival, Brecon Beacons, Wales

Green Man Festival

This review has to start with a total confession of my journalistic bias: Green Man Festival is my favourite place on Earth. Consider my hat firmly in the ring on that one. Just like kids hanging up their stockings for Santa, or lonely middle-aged housewives hearing the thumping beat of the X-Factor opening music, the foreboding doom of black cloud moving over the horizon of an otherwise kind-of-dry summer fills me with an excitement that can only mean one thing: Green Man is coming. … Continue Reading

Sonisphere Festival, Knebworth UK

Sonisphere Festival

July 30-August 1, 2010

For a festival that’s only two years old, Sonisphere UK 2010 has been a success in almost every way. The traveling European music festival made a stop at Knebworth, England this past weekend, treating 55,000 rock and metal music fans to some of the biggest, baddest names in rock’n’roll history, including Iggy and the Stooges, Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden, Rammstein and other influential rockers. … Continue Reading