News Preview: Benicassim 2013

Photo: FIB File

Benicassim provides a slightly different experience to your average rain-drenched, mud-encrusted UK festival shindig. Set on the Spanish coast, directly in between Valencia and Barcelona, temperatures are consistently scorching and the sun is far from shy. With a beautiful beach on site and bands not emerging on stage until 6pm at the earliest, daytimes are for sleeping, sun bathing and swimming, with the evenings reserved strictly for partying into the wee hours of the morning. It’s a truly European affair, and there’s an assortment of excellent bands on show.

Deciding on who you want to see will always involve great deliberation when the lineup is this good. Luckily for you, we’ve hand picked a few of our favourite, and possibly less well-known, acts. If you fancy taking a bit of a risk and a break from the bigger names, you’d be foolish to miss out on the following:

Woodkid - Sunday, Trident Senses Stage

Lyon-born Yoann Lemoine, aka Woodkid, might be more well revered for his achievements as a music video director than his songwriting exploits. Having directed Katy Perry’s ‘Teenage Dream’ and Lana Del Ray’s ‘Born To Die’, he garnered a Grammy nomination when he went behind the camera for the video to his own track, ‘Run Boy Run’, in 2012. Since then, he’s released debut full-length ‘The Golden Age’, an album full of dramatic, big-beat driven neo-folk. It’s well and truly beautiful.

Echo Lake - Friday, Pringles FibClub Stage

After the tragic passing of drummer Pete Hayes last summer, Echo Lake’s debut full-length ‘WIld Peace’, released just days after his death, was met with justifiably unanimous praise. With Dayo James now assuming drumming duties, the band will play a hazy late night set, which should provide a stunning backdrop to their brand of eery, ethereal dreampop. Expect it to be spectacular.

Deap Vally - Sunday, Maravillas Main Stage

Deap Vally are a couple of badass rock chicks from L.A. who make heavy-hitting garage rock with big time attitude. Like the White Stripes, they put on a hell of a live show, and after a hugely successful and widely televised set on Glastonbury’s John Peel Stage, it’ll be interesting to see how well they fill the massive main stage of Benicassim. With debut album ‘Sistrionix’ just released, the opening slot on Sunday should provide the perfect time to catch Deap Vally before the whole world is clamouring to see them up close.

Temples - Thursday, Pringles FibClub Stage

Hailing from Kettering in the Midlands, Temples are well and truly bringing psychedelic pop back to the masses. Combining the big, experimental production techniques of The Flaming Lips with the songwriting prowess of The Beatles and ELO, their melody-packed tracks of jangling guitar-goodness should perfectly suit the sun-drenched beach vibes of Benicassim. Fingers crossed they’ll provide us with some feel-good summer festival moments.