• Body & Soul Festival 2015

    June 24, 2015 - By 

    Friday afternoon of Body and Soul 2015 saw waves of punters throwing their eyes in every direction while walking around the impressively navigable site. Everywhere you look something else is noticed, be it a person juggling, dancing or performing acrobatics, or another one of the myriad food, drink or craft stalls dotted throughout the place. This sense of wonder and intrigue that opened the festival continued throughout the weekend but from the get-go acted as a reminder that this festival is about far more than the musical line-up. It’s about escape from the norm, from the trajectory that a day…

  • Primavera Sound 2015

    June 11, 2015 - By 

    This year Primavera Sound celebrated its 15th birthday, in which time it has established itself as one of the foremost music festivals worldwide. Every year festival curators have aimed to deliver a top class line-up offering a diverse range of musical talent. Always interesting, they manage to blend exciting contemporary artists with auspicious greats who have paved the way. Scanning a list of legendary acts who have graced the Primavera stage is overwhelming; it’s like a who’s who of groundbreaking artists from the past 50 years, including Lou Reed, Iggy and the Stooges, Patti Smith, Television, Motorhead, My Bloody Valentine, Pavement,…

  • AVA Festival 2015

    June 1, 2015 - By 

    Well, here we are.  After months of anticipation and the mandatory, giddy daily countdown, the moment has arrived for Belfast’s inaugural AVA (Audio Visual Arts) Festival.  We’ve entered the Titanic Qtr and are making our way to the goliath T13 warehouse and playing spot the raver as we increase our pace, beyond excited for what we’ll see when we get there.  When we do, a multitude of coaches indicates that although it won’t kick off for some time yet, there’ll be a sizeable crowd inside.  There is, to our relief, a mass of music fans buzzing around the gargantuan space.…

  • Stendhal Festival of Art 2014

    August 10, 2014 - By 

    Make no bones about it: the Glasgowbury-shaped hole in the Northern Irish summer festival calendar is indeed a sizable one. But as is equally apparent to those of us in eager search of its successor, it’s all very much a case of one door closes, another door opens. Teetering right on the precipice of ascending to the enviable rank of Northern Ireland’s singular unmissable two-day music and arts festival, Stendhal Festival of Art, with its glorious rural expanse and wonderfully kaleidoscopic eclecticism, is set to do just that this weekend. Here’s how things went down. Held on the barley-bordered fields of Ballymully Farm…

  • Festival Diary: With Full Force 2014

    July 19, 2014 - By 

    What better way to kick of the July than with German beer, super sunny skies, BBQs and some hardcore and metal? Takingplace on the first weekend of July in Roitzschjora Airfield, Löbnitz, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, With Full Force sees its twenty-first outing this weekend, packing in some of the very best acts in their respective, varyingly heavy fields. I fly in to Berlin the day before to avoid the bulk of people who normally arrive on the first day, catching a coach down to Liepzig and spending the journey joking and discussing bands with two other festival goers. Having met with…