Review : Beards, dreads and mud, Bearded Theory Festival 2014

 Every­thing looks spark­ly and fresh at Beard­ed The­o­ry’s new venue at Cat­ton Hall. The grass is lush, green and springy. The main stage stands at one end of the remark­ably flat new site, with a dance tent and the more inti­mate Tor­na­do Town tent just far enough away to be out of earshot, while a secret stage lies hidden…

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The best festivals for 2014 – an update

Here’s an update of some of my top fes­ti­val rec­om­mends for 2014 and as of the time of post­ing, still have tick­ets avail­able. These are all small to medi­um-sized gath­er­ings (no hour-long trudges to the are­na). All these fes­ti­vals have plen­ty of well thought-out activ­i­ties for chil­dren and a fair­ly broad age range of atten­dance, so whether…

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Music news: Phildel and Metallica (but not together)

Phildel has just won Pop/Top 40 cat­e­go­ry for Moon­sea in the Inter­na­tion­al Song­writ­ing Com­pe­ti­tion where she was up against over 20,000 entries. A fan­tas­tic result from a mul­ti-tal­en­t­ed and extreme­ly hard­work­ing per­former. This pres­ti­gious songr­writ­ing com­pe­ti­tion was judged this year by such lumi­nar­ies as John May­all, Black Fran­cis (The Pix­ies), Robert Smith (The Cure),  Tom Waits and Imag­ine Drag­ons.This is…

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Review: Kurt Vile at St James’s Church

St James’s Church, Pic­cadil­ly, it’s a beau­ti­ful jew­el of a church designed by Christo­pher Wren, and like sev­er­al Lon­don church­es, moon­lights as a music venue. Noth­ing of the Metal­li­ca vari­ety, obvi­ous­ly. We are here to see Kurt Vile do a solo set which is more in keep­ing. Despite its beau­ty, the church’s view­ing expe­ri­ence is only just adequate;…

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