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London Summer Festivals – UPDATED
So Stag & Dagger was crap. Get over it. With some new entries, here’s SOIWT’s updated guide to the capital’s indie parties:
Field Day (6 August)
Last year’s Victoria Park indie-fest-meets-village-fete-meets-acid-disco was dry! Dry! And it had a proper banging headliner (Phoenix) for once. The same again would be nice. It’s a week later so everyone can go to the Croydon Summer Festival the Saturday before.
Top of the bill: Warpaint, Jamie Woon, Wild Beasts, Electrelane, Jamie xx, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, James Blake, Zola Jesus
Impress your friends by knowing about: Hype Williams, Trophy Wife, Prizes, Willy Mason
Tickets from £44Lovebox (15-17 July)
Camp pop, dance and indie kicks for non-campers in Vicky Park, with a line-up that starts mainstream and ends up cool.
Top of the bill: Snoop Dogg, The Wombats, Scissor Sisters, Robyn, The Drums, Kelis and Katy B
Impress your friends by knowing about: Fenech Soler, Flying Lotus, P Money, Dry The River
Tickets from £108.50 for the weekend.Macmillan’s Big Mix (18 June)
One day multi-venue Shoreditch event in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support.
Top of the bill: Clare Maguire, James Yuill, cocknbullkid
Impress your friends by knowing about: Giles Cynics, Emily & The Woods, Treetop Flyers
Tickets from £15.Wireless (1-3 July)
Super-extensive Hyde Park hullabaloo with faintly alternative edge, but sadly no camping
Top of the bill: Pulp, Chemical Brothers, Black-Eyed Peas, Plan B, David Guetta, TV On The Radio
Impress your friends by knowing about: Battles, Summer Camp, The Naked & Famous, Devotchka, Wretch 32
Tickets from £142 for the full three daysSouth West Four (27-28 August)
Electro-focused excitement on personality-free flatlands known as Clapham Common
Top of the bill: Underworld, Pendulum, Magnetic Man
Impress your friends by knowing about: No-one else yet announced
Tickets from £85 for both daysThe 1-2-3-4 (9 July)
Poor man’s Stag & Dagger? Clever clogs’ Field Day? Talent-spotter’s wet dream? All of the above?
Top of the bill: Black Lips, Autokratz, Raveonettes, Lydia Lunch
Impress your friends by knowing about: Echo Lake, Fair Ohs, Becoming Real, Sex Beet
Tickets from £22.50.Sundae Festival (23-24 July)
The London instalment of this two-dayer promises a faux-fete feel, straw hats, plenty of unsubtle Ben & Jerry’s marketing and some decent bands of yesteryear. It’s held on Clap Common these days, not baronial Regent’s Park.
Top of the bill: Maximo Park, Ocean Colour Scene, Gary Numan, Ash
Impress your friends by knowing about: Little Comets
Tickets £22 per day.The Big Feastival (1-3 July)
More fake fete-ness on the Common here, this time all in the name ofJamie Olivercharity. Ostensibly, ”The Big Feastival is a new three day family friendly event combining food from some of the country’s top chefs with a top drawer selection live music acts”.
Top of the bill: Mystery Jets, Guillemots, Athlete, New Young Pony Club, Roots Manuva, The Charlatans
Impress your friends by knowing about: Saint Saviour, The Bees, Trophy Wife
Tickets from £40 per day or £70 for the weekend. -
London Summer Festivals – a round-up
With details of this summer’s London festivals flooding in thick and fast, it can be hard to keep track. With that in mind, here’s SOIWT’s pocket guide to the most interesting ones, with the lowdown on what each bash promises. This will be updated periodically:
Camden Crawl
Date: Saturday 1 – Sunday 2 May, Camden (various venues)
Confirmed line-up: Pendulum, Calvin Harris, Ms Dynamite, New Young Pony Club, The Drums, Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, Speech Debelle, We Are Scientists Lostprophets. Oh – and Sugababes. No, really
Cost: Weekend tickets are £54.90 if booked early, and £61.3o otherwise. Days are £38.25 whenever you snaffle ‘em (tickets)
Is it gonna be whack or what? High chance of whackness, dude. The line-ups much more multifaceted than normal, but there still remains the terminal CC problem: getting into more than two venues all night.
Go if your favourite Skins character is: Emily
Stag & Dagger
When/where: Friday 21 May, Shoreditch (various venues)
Confirmed line-up: Filthy Dukes, Is Tropical, The Radio Dept, Django Django, Comanechi, Mount Kimbie, Sian Alice Group
Cost: £15.45 (tickets)
Is it gonna be whack or what? Though far from fully furnished, the line-up looks a mite weaker this year - but as the bands of most repute are always impossible to see (such are the busy bars), what’s it matter anyway? The tix remain hideously cheap, and the event always comes with a bonkers friendly atmosphere, verging on the indisciplined…
Go if your favourite Skins character is: FreddieWireless
When/where: Friday 2 – Sunday 4 July, Hyde Park (no camping)
Confirmed line-up: LCD Soundsystem, 2manydjs, U.N.K.L.E, Plan B, The Big Pink, Jay-Z, The Temper Trap, P!nk and Lily Allen – her final performance, apparently. SOIWT has been more gutted.
Cost: £110 for the weekend, £85 for a two-day combo and £47.50 for a single day (tickets)
Is it gonna be whack or what? As ifff! With some seriously heavyweight dancery – U.N.K.L.E’s return is particularly exciting – on the Saturday, and Jay-Z to close things out on Sunday, this should be excellent. Jay-Z in Hyde-P, brup brup brup…
Go if your favourite Skins character is: Cook
Lovebox
When/where: Friday 16 – Saturday 18 July, Victoria Park (no camping)
Confirmed line-up: Grace Jones, Mark Ronson, Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music, Groove Armada, Chromeo, Crookers, Chase & Status, Hurts, Hot Chip, Ellie Goulding, Empire of the Sun, Rox, Joy Orbison and Wild Beasts
Cost: £99 for the weekend, £80 for two days and £45 for just the one (tickets)
Is it gonna be whack or what? As previously discussed, Lovebox is suddenly a lot cooler, with some pop and indie edge to its sometimes pedestrian dance headliners. With a likely Groove Armada and Bryan Ferry duet, this could be ruddy excellent.
Go if your favourite Skins character is: PandaThe 1-2-3-4 Shoreditch
When/where: Saturday 24 July, Shoreditch Park
Confirmed line-up: These New Puritans, Vivian Girls, Wavves, We Have Band, Dum Dum Girls, Trailer Trash Tracys, Wild Palms. Lots of up-and-comers you can pretend to have heard of
Cost: £16.50 at the moment (tickets)
Is it gonna be whack or what? Always a bit cheap and cheerful this one, but with a stonkingly piffling price tag and some vary decent bands on the bill, what’s to lose?
Go if your favourite Skins character is: NaomiField Day
When/where: Saturday 31 July, Victoria Park
Confirmed line-up: Phoenix, Caribou, Memory Tapes, Pantha du Prince, Hudson Mohawke, These New Puritans, The Fall, Andrew Weatherall, No Age
Cost: £33.33 (tickets)
Is it gonna be whack or what? Only if it rains yet again. Otherwise, these days Field Day is well-run and comes with a friendly atmosphere, kicking afterparties and – crucial – and egg-and-spoon racing field. It’s diverse – with various cultures well represented – and bitesize, and Phoenix’s headline slot should ensure things end with a real bang.
Go if your favourite Skins character is: Thomas
Offset
When/where: Saturday 4 – Sunday 5 September, Hainault Forest (camping)
Confirmed line-up: First wave now announced: including Liquid Liquid, Cluster, Telepathé, These New Puritans, Rolo Tomassi, Bo Ningen, Fiction.
Cost: £65 for the weekend with camping, £55 without. Day tickets are £28 (tickets)
Is it gonna be whack or what? Not a chance, sonny. This is London’s hippest festival, with legendary punksters and the trendiest, newest young things all being convivial in the unexpectedly pretty Hainault Forest.
Go if your favourite Skins character is: EffyGet Loaded in the Park, the SW4 Weekender and Hard Rock Calling are all also on, but they’re a little too mainstream and mostly Claphamish for SOIWT’s hip-as-shit tastes. Give them the scorn they deserve, dear readers… There’s also the Somerset House Series of concerts, but that’s not really a festival now is it?
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