Muso’s Guide’s Festival Season: June Previews – No Direction Home, Field Day, Nova and more…

We’ve asked some of our writers to preview a few of this year’s festivals that they’re most looking forward to; to offer some idea of what the event is about, and to pick out a few bands and artists that they’re most excited about seeing perform. In this installment, we take a look at the End of the Road affiliated No Direction Home; the newly revamped Field Day and its sibling event The Apple Cart Festival; the inaugural Nova Festival, and Somerset’s Sunrise Celebration. … Continue Reading

Dot To Dot 2012: A Festival Preview

Dot to Dot 2012

By Paul Faller

Website / Tickets

It’s arguable that the UK is beginning to suffer from festival fatigue – even big names like Sonisphere have fallen victim to the tough financial climate. With that in mind, city-based festivals are looking like more and more of an attractive proposition, providing the opportunity to pick from a myriad of bands for a fraction of the price of larger events, and with the added bonus that you can worry less about the weather and don’t need to sleep in a tent. Since its inaugural year in 2005, Dot to Dot has expanded from its roots in Nottingham to include dates in Bristol (since 2007) and Manchester (since 2010), establishing itself as an excellent event to catch both up-and-coming bands and more established acts – and this year looks to be no exception. The festival’s three-day stint starts in Bristol on Saturday 2nd June, then the action moves to Nottingham on Sunday 3rd June before finishing up in Manchester on Monday 4th June.

… Continue Reading

The Camden Crawl 2012: The Review

By Nick Levine (@nicklevine)

When planning the itinerary for last weekend’s festival of music and culture, it is surprising that despite being a resident of Camden, I have not heard of a number of participating venues taking place at the Crawl.

The journey on Saturday starts late in the afternoon at the Electric Ballroom to see Denmark’s The Rumour Said Fire. Playing to a sparse but gradually filling up room, the band zip through songs from their debut album The Arrogant. Vocalist Søren Lilholt has something of Chris Martin about him due to his designer stubble, chord jacket, thinning hairline and battered acoustic guitar. Musically, The Rumour Said Fire are proponents with a pleasingly sound similar to that of Fleet Foxes, which may yet become camp fire sing-alongs in the future. … Continue Reading

Win! Global Gathering tickets!

Global Gathering

WIN! We’ve a pair of weekend tickets to this year’s Global Gathering to give away. To enter, simply ‘like’ us on Facebook, and answer the question in the comments below today’s post over there.

Winner will be chosen at random on Friday 6th July, and informed via Facebook. Entrants must be over 18 and will need to provide ID. More information about this year’s event after the jump. … Continue Reading

The Camden Crawl 2012: A Festival Preview

By Nick Levine (@nicklevine)

The Camden Crawl this year returns to North London bigger and better than ever. Taking place on the May Day Bank Holiday weekend (4-6 May), with over 300 acts across the spectrum of music, comedy and performance set to perform. The festival takes place across a plethora of different venues, with just one ticket allowing access to all. It’s a great way of sampling some hotly tipped bands and comedians without breaking the bank. … Continue Reading

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