Northwest Festival Watch – August 2014

Field trippin'

Preview by Laura Swift | 01 Aug 2014

If Beacons – see our rundown, left – leaves you wanting more, why not just spend five days leisurely making the short journey from Skipton to Ilkley and stay on for the debut Fieldtrip, 15-17 Aug? It’s 15 minutes in the car like, but you could just walk really really slowly. With a harder-hitting dance lineup from a coalition of local party legends including Back to Basics (Leeds), Mute! and PlayitDown (Manchester), it's not for the faint-hearted, so it’ll depend how replenished you feel – but that week in the Yorkshire Dales camping out beneath the stars should’ve done the trick. Ben UFO, Boddika and Francis Inferno Orchestra join the real Todd Terry, not that Terje bloke, for the sickest lineup you are ever going to find on Addingham Moor (baht ’at). There’s also Levon Vincent, Prosumer, and a live set from Mo Kolours for more lift-offs than Leeds-Bradford airport.

Lancashire’s Cloudspotting festival is as pleasant as you’d imagine something with a family area named Cloud Cuckoo Land – and run by a team called Playhappy – would be. Views down the Ribble Valley, reasonably priced microbrewery beers and food from the well-loved Honest Crust Pizza and TukTuk Cafe are the order of the day (well, three days, 1-3 Aug). Happily, the lineup avoids the schmaltzier end of the folk spectrum and brings in Northwest acts who’re a bit weirder ’round the edges – Kiran Leonard, Denis Jones, Plank! – as well as favourites of our Scotland sister paper, Kid Canaveral. More of our Northern brethren head down in the form of Randolph’s Leap, Pictish Trail and the recently Josie Long-sporting Tuff Love; elsewhere, Liz Green’s oak-smoked, timewarped vocals are always welcome, Cate Le Bon and Melt Yourself Down headline, and elder Mancunians will no doubt make room for the raspy verbosity of I Am Kloot’s John Bramwell. All in all, it’s an attractive option that weekend if you’re not heading to the reliably fuss-free Kendal Calling, which is already sold out.

Liverpool International Music Festival (LIMF) spans the latter half of the month (13-31Aug) with a lineup that tries to be something to everyone; where it succeeds is with the International Emerging Sounds Stage, which hosts Kanye collaborator Evian Christ, Ninja Tune poet Kate Tempest and prodigal producer Rustie alongside Iceland’s Hjaltalín, and the Bristol-Trinidad duo Jus Now, whose triumphant mixes of soca and UK bass we’ve been rinsing in the tropical heat of The Skinny office while putting this issue together. The festival starts on 13 Aug but that stage runs 23-25; the Quietus’s ‘Minor Characters’ strand of LIMF’s Commissions programme also commands a look, with Luke Abbott, Forest Swords and East India Youth all contributing new pieces to a live event and exhibition at the Kazimier on 29 Aug.

Cloudspotting, Stephen Park, Gisburn Forest, Slaidburn, Lancashire, 1-3 Aug, £80 adult weekend camping, www.cloudspotting-festival.co.uk

Fieldtrip Festival, High House Farm, Addingham, Ilkley, 15-17 Aug, £85 adult weekend camping, www.fieldtripfestival.co.uk

Liverpool International Music Festival, 13-31 Aug, www.limfestival.com