Beacons festival: Lighting the Way

One glance at Skipton's Beacons festival's line-up might give those without their finger on the pulse the heebie jeebies: a seemingly effortless balance of interesting indie and on-point electronic acts, not niche but hardly mainstream either, it would seem painfully cool if it weren't also an event executed with the kind of warmth and rough'n'ready, we're-all-in-it-together welcome that's missing from so many of today's super slick summer shindigs. Last year's maiden voyage felt 'boutique' and cared for without being sanitised – indeed, after dark it was the opposite of pedestrian, the genuine undercurrent of naughtiness whipped up by the headline DJs valiantly kept alive through the small hours and into the mist-moistened Northern mornings by increasingly weird, impromptu performances in the 24-hour Impossible Theatre tent at the edge of the campsite.

Running 16-18 Aug, this year's programming ups things a notch, with unmissable names including the prodigious James Holden, fresh from the release of his scything, vertiginous new LP The Inheritors; Spanish producer John Talabot, responsible for perhaps the album of 2012, Fin, making one of his infrequent live appearances; and our June cover star, Gold Panda, whose humid Brazil, the lead track on kaleidoscopic new record Half of Where You Live, is proving the stealth hit of the summer – we can't wait to hear its clipped beats, needling atmospherics and choked vox played out live in the, er, suitably sweaty tropics of a low-lying farm in Yorkshire (no, really).

Mindful of providing some replenishing respite from all the disgusting raving you'll be doing – hello five-hour Theo Parrish and Andres back-to-back set – the festival team have expanded on last year's relatively minimal theatre, art and film programming with a decent crop of movies and Wacky Shit to Do, from Ben Wheatley's Sightseers showing at midnight on the Thursday (because that's definitely what you want to put you at ease having just set up camp in the middle of a vast expanse of flat land, with only a thin layer of flammable material between you and several thousand other potential nutters) to daily whisky tasting sessions and something on the Sunday called the er, Vegetable Based Competitive Games, courtesy of performance duo the Reetso Embassy.

Our tips? It'll be a celebratory weekend for Domino's Julia Holter, whose Loud City Song, the follow-up to the giddily received Ekstasis, is released on the 19th. Her hypnotic, quixotic vocals will likely still a recovering Saturday crowd; as may the two soaring choruses of the year, in the form of Heaven, How Long – the standout track on the debut EP from the Quietus Phonographic Corporation's fledgling act East India Youth, aka young Londoner William Doyle – and Vondelpark's California Analog Dream. There are some difficult clashes – Ghostpoet vs Move D, Holden vs Savages – but you can just ignore them by buggering off back to your tent and dissolving into gin.