News Preview: Beacons Festival 2013

Photo: Scott Salt / Beacons

Beacons is finding its feet. Teething problems aside, last year’s inaugural weekend was a success, which must have been a sigh of relief for the promoters – Beacons 2011 was unfortunately cancelled due to freakish weather conditions and low-laying ground.

Now, with one year’s experience under their belt, Team Beacons have curated a bewilderingly diverse roster of various entertainments. The weekend is billed as a ‘Fresh Art & Boutique Music Festival’, and their target audience seems to range from wide-eyed and devoted techno heads to bleary-eyed and devoted trendy dads (with family in tow, of course).

So with this extravagant array on offer, where do you begin?

NOPE

Being a Yorkshire festival, it only makes sense that Leeds’ music scene is fairly represented. Of course, with Leeds being a close-knit and somewhat incestuous musical community, this seems to mean that every member of Hookworms gets to play at least twice over the weekend. Indeed, look closely and you’ll see their side projects all over the lineup – including Leeds stalwarts Cowtown, Menace Beach and the veritable supergroup that is Nope. While lazy, drone-laden and retromanic ‘psychedelic rock’ may be en vogue at the moment, Nope are the real deal. Armed with ferocious riffs, digital delay and TWO DRUMMERS, Nope sound like a bad trip – but in the best possible way.

JULIA HOLTER

Genre titles are rarely very useful, particularly when that title is as meaningless as ‘baroque pop’, which serves only to conjure an image of Vivaldi wearing a head microphone. Julia Holter has the misfortune of having that reductive title applied to her music time and time again, just because she put her keyboard onto the harpsichord setting. Anyone who has heard her music will know the disservice of this, as she deftly blends her classical training, experimental tendencies and pop interests.

FLOATING POINTS

The line-up for Beacons this year boasts a strong engagement with electronic music, reflective of trends within music in general. While there are some obvious heavy-hitters on the roster, with James Holden, Ben UFO and of course the Motor City masters Theo Parrish and Andres all gracing the stage, Floating Points aka Sam Shepard provides one of the more exciting dance prospects of the weekend. Buoyed by his own classical training, Shepard sets adrift jazz melodies over the depths of his distinct house voice.

DANNY BROWN

Beacons’ sole nod to the world of hip-hop comes in the form of Danny Brown, seemingly the indie world’s favourite rapper. Cynicism aside, Brown brings his outlandish flow to the Loud and Quiet stage on Sunday evening. After numerous setbacks, his new record ‘Old’ is set to finally be released sometime in August, so expect to catch Brown in a celebratory mood.

GHOSTPOET

It might have seemed one Ghostpoet was forgotten in that reference to Danny Brown as Beacons’ only hip-hop artist. Yet it seems somewhat reductive to even refer to Ghostpoet’s music as ‘hip-hop’. On most recent record, Some Say I So I Say Light, Obaro Ejimiwe’s delivery tends to more resemble mysterious spoken word than straight-up rap, while Richard Formby’s production references Bristol bass, ambient and synth experimentation. It will be interesting how this ambitious and intriguing landscape is recreated live.

DRENGE

Sibling scuzzernauts Drenge have been a pervasive and almost unavoidable force in new music this summer, due in no small part to the dubious endorsement of erstwhile Labour election co-ordinator Tom Watson. With their grudging fixation with the seedier side of modern British life – binge drinking, anti-social behavior and gross humanity – a festival full of drunken louts in the grotty north should be the perfect place to see them.

FUCKED UP

They relentlessly tour their visceral, screaming hardcore punk about FUCKING SHIT UP – to the uninitiated, Fucked Up may seem like the angriest band in the world. Yet as anyone who has seen them live can testify, the band is quite a different prospect. Expect plenty of sweaty grins and even sweatier hugs from lead singer Damian Abraham, happier than anyone else that they are headlining with their raucous squall.

SIGHTSEERS + Q&A

Of course, Beacons is more than just a music festival. Indeed, there are craft workshops, talks, installations, whisk(e)y tastings and gourmet culinary stalls all over the site. Particularly exciting is the screening of Sightseers, directed by the brilliant Ben Wheatley, along with a Q&A session with actor-screenwriters Alice Lowe and Steve Oram. Moreover, Beacons’ Skipton moorside locale perfectly reflects the Yorkshire Dales setting – just hopefully with less blood.