Top indie music website Pitchfork has a festival all of its own in Chicago July 18th – 20th with a line up to reflect the curator’s cutting edge tastes…Animal Collective, Jarvis Coker, Fleet Foxes, Spoon and Spiritualized. On Friday Pitchfork and All Tomorrow’s Parties present ‘Don’t Look Back’ featuring Public Enemy performing ‘It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back’. Two and three day passes have sold out but single day passes are still available via Ticketweb.
Happening on the same w/end as Pitchfork but several thousand miles due east is the UK’s Latitude Festival. Taking place on the sunny Suffolk coast, Latitude has a relaxed attitude about it with a range of music and activities to please families and die hard music fan alike . Artists include Beth Orton, Sigur Ros, Interpol & Tindersticks .The Lake Stage is exactly that and its curated by BBC Radio’s Huw Stephens who prides himself on finding talent that’s at its chrysalis stage so you can be sure you’ll hear loads of new artists at Latitude this year.
From Suffolk to Spain for the Benicassim Festival. It takes place by the beach and the music begins late in the day and goes all night so this is the perfect event for insomniacs . The line up - Gnarls Barkely, Booka Shade ,The Ting Tings, Leonard Cohen and Yelle - has received a lot of negative comments, but most of the nay sayers are still going - which shows you that sometimes its not just about the music, its about hanging with your mates and worrying about very little else other than a bit of sunburn or where to stash your cash when all you’re wearing is a cossie!
And finally a quick mention of two festivals taking place over the weekend of July 11th-
Cactus in Belgium and Exit in Serbia- the latter features Paul Weller, 2 Many DJs, The Sex Pistols and Primal Scream while Cactus has more of a world music chilled out vibe with artists such as Tinariwen, Youssou N’Dour and the Cinematic Orchestra on the bill.
KCRW
