If you’re feel­ing a tad under­fes­ti­valled, there are even more events to head off to late in the sea­son. Noth­ing like pro­long­ing sum­mer with a week­end of wall-to-wall music. Or if you’re pushed for time, or had enough of damp tents, non camp­ing fes­ti­vals are spring­ing up in abundance.

Sea Change, Devon   25th to 26th August

On to its sec­ond year, Sea Change fes­ti­val is set in a clus­ter of venues around Totnes such as a ball­room, a restored cin­e­ma and a walled gar­den (all indoors). The fes­ti­val was set up by Drift record shop mean­ing you are assured of a well curat­ed pro­gramme. I’m delight­ed to hear the elu­sive Man­ches­ter out­fit WH Lung are mak­ing an appear­ance (they’re also at Green Man and End of the Road festivals). 

Also appear­ing are Amber Arcades, Blanck Mass, Hey Colos­sus, plus talks and  DJ sets. You can stay at a BnB local­ly, or take advan­tage of the low-price camp­ing option list­ed on the web­site. Sea Change festival.

OnBlackheath   9th to 10th September

is a per­fect non camp­ing week­end for fam­i­lies and, as its part­ner is good old John Lewis, food takes equal billing to the music with a chef’s demo stage, the John Lewis Cook­ery School, talks and chef appear­ances. Nat­u­ral­ly there are plen­ty of kid­die things going on includ­ing an appear­ance by peren­ni­al favourite Michael Rosen. Get your tick­ets here OnBlack­heath festival.

Head for the Hills  15th to 16th September

This is the new name for Rams­bot­tom Fes­ti­val which takes place at Rams­bot­tom Crick­et Club; there’s always a good line­up and things have ramped up even more this year. The Stran­glers, Maxï­mo Park, Dutch Uncles, Neville Sta­ple Band, Skin­ny Lis­ter, plus Alex­is Tay­lor of Hot Chip. I rec­om­mend you see Tom Hick­ox on Sun­day: I still remem­ber his thought­ful and beau­ti­ful set at Fes­ti­val No 6 in 2014. There is lim­it­ed camp­site avail­abil­i­ty. Tick­ets are £90 for full week­end, camp­ing a lit­tle extra.

 

Liverpool Psych Fest   22–23rd September

This very zeit­geisty fes­ti­val set in Liv­er­pool’s Baltic Tri­an­gle has a con­sis­tent­ly well-curat­ed line­up. This year Liv­er­pool Inter­na­tion­al Fes­ti­val of Psy­che­delia sees the likes of Song­hoy Blues, Loop, Andy Votel, Mag­netix, LAW­itch and Sex Swing. If you need to stay near­by, Liv­er­pool hotels don’t come cheap but there’s a Hamp­ton by Hilton five min­utes walk away from the Baltic Tri­an­gle. Liv­er­pool Psych Fest.

Twin Peaks Festival, Hornsey Town Hall, north London  7–8th October

Twin Peaks fans can get a damn fine cup of cof­fee, cher­ry pie and meet some of the char­ac­ters (Sher­i­lynn Fenn and Michael Horse)  at the Offi­cial Twin Peaks UK fes­ti­val, over the first week­end of Octo­ber at Hornsey Town Hall in north Lon­don. There’s some­thing pecu­liar­ly Lynchi­an about the build­ing too. Day tick­ets from £65. Hornsey Town Hall Arts

Simple Things festival – 21st October

At var­i­ous venues around Bris­tol, this day fes­ti­val head­lines with Left­field per­form­ing Left­ism. Also play­ing: Wild Beasts, Daph­ni, Omar Souley­man and many, many more. Tick­ets are on third release at £40. Sim­ple Things fes­ti­val link

The End festival  1 ‑25th November

The End fes­ti­val used to bright­ened up dark Novem­ber evenings in north Lon­don for sev­er­al years (see 2015 here) but it dis­ap­peared in 2016, more’s the pity. Now The End is back, and will be pop­ping up at venues all around Lon­don and beyond. Details are soon to be finalised, but keep a look out, I’ll report on it short­ly. Organ­is­ers are The Local who also pro­grammed at Wilder­ness, and have a few oth­er good­ies lined up for autumn: David Broughton at Paper Dress Vin­tage (tick­ets here), and Hawk (details to come).