Festival Focus: Benicàssim, Sziget, Roskilde, Y-Not

Muse, Disclosure and The Chemical Brothers are among the latest additions to the line-up of the Festival Internacional de Benicàssim in July. Headliners Muse last played the festival, which takes place near the town of Benicàssim on the Valencian coast, in 2007. Other newly announced acts include Massive Attack, The 1975, The Vaccines, Catfish and the Bottlemen and Hinds.

Muse’s other confirmed European festival appearance will be at Hungary’s ‘Island of Freedom’, Sziget, which looks determined to win the European Festival Award for best line-up two years in a row with a bill that also includes The Last Shadow Puppets, Bloc Party, Bastille, Chvrches and Bring Me the Horizon.

Radiohead and Mumford & Sons will headline the sold-out 40th OpenAir St Gallen in north-eastern Switzerland. Taking place from 30 June to 3 July, the 30,000-capacity-per-day festival is as of this year promoted by newly formed promotion/booking agency wepromote, a joint venture between Gadget, OpenAir St Gallen, SummerDays Festival, Incognito Productions and wildpony. (Pictured above is OpenAir St Gallen 2015.)

Happy Mondays, Paul Hartnoll of Orbital and Dub Pistols are among the first artists announced for the inaugural The Big Kahuna, a three-day festival taking place from 26 to 28 August in Horsham in West Sussex, UK. The festival is organised by Brighton-based corporate event planner Fire + Ice Productions.

Damon Albarn (pictured; photo by Bill Ebbesen) and the Syrian National Orchestra for Arabic Music will open Roskilde Festival‘s main Orange Stage. Albarn and the orchestra join a line-up that currently includes Red Hot Chili Peppers, New Order, Foals, PJ Harvey, Bring Me the Horizon, LCD Soundsystem, Wiz Khalifa and Tame Impala.

Jean-Michel Jarre, Tame Impala (pictured; photo by Abby Gillardi) and Modeselektor head up the second wave of acts announced for the 19th Melt! Festival, taking place from 15 to 19 July at Ferropolis in Gräfenhainichen, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.

While the newly christened Lemmy Stage at Download is already packed out with headliners Rammstein, Iron Maiden, Korn, Deftones and, on their final, The End tour, Black Sabbath, there’s clearly plenty of room elsewhere, as promoter/booker Andy Copping has nabbed Jane’s Addiction, NOFX, Anti-Flag, Alien Ant Farm, Nikki Sixx’s Sixx AM and 31 other acts for the UK metal fest.

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds (pictured; photo by Batiste Safont) will headline both Y-Not Festival in Matlock, Derbyshire, and Kendal Calling in the Lake District in the last weekend of July. Madness, The Hives and Catfish and the Bottlemen will appear at both events, with Rudimental and The Charlatans also confirmed for Kendal Calling.

Rudimental will also join Disclosure at the latter’s Wild Life Festival, which has booked Ice Cube, James Bay, Skepta, Stormzy and Busta Rhymes for its second year.

Finally, Isle of Wight Festival yesterday announced five new acts: The Cribs, The Kills, Ocean Colour Scene, Status Quo, and Mike + The Mechanics. (No Prince yet, though.)