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The Darkness do Dingwalls: Final IFF showcases announced

The ‘I Believe in a Thing Called Love’ hitmakers are among the final acts announced for the International Festival Forum 2019 later this month

By IQ on 10 Sep 2019

The Darkness

The Darkness play the X-ray Touring showcase on Wednesday 25 Sept


With less than three weeks to go until kick-off, the final showcase acts have been announced for the fifth International Festival Forum (IFF) in London.

Kicking off the conference on Tuesday evening is Solo’s Chinchilla, a 22-year-old self-made urban pop artist whose live show has graced stages at the Great Escape and Liverpool Sound City this summer.

Showcase highlights include Brighton buzz band Squid, who perform on Thursday evening as part of ATC Live’s showcase, in advance of an autumn tour including stops at Pitchfork and Primavera Weekender; London-based six-piece Sports Team, who cap a huge summer of European festival shows with Primary Talent; and ITB’s guitar trailblazers Life, who land at IFF after shows at Pukkelpop, Paleo and Glastonbury.

Elsewhere, Pitch & Smith puts on alt-rockers Happyness in advance of autumn dates supporting Jay Som and the Magic Gang; Paradigm presents 21-year old Hull native and hotly tipped new talent Charlotte; and Toutpartout takes over Camden Assembly with acts including Niklas Paschburg, who performs at IFF after more than 5m streams of his single ‘Spark’ and supports for the likes of Alice Cooper, Prong and Deftones.

X-ray Touring’s showcase offering, meanwhile, includes the multi-platinum-selling the Darkness. Describing themselves as “brooding, magnificent, like the mighty mother condor sitting upon a rock egg in a nest of curly hair,” the spandex-clad rockers take the stage at IFF before the release of their sixth studio album, Easter is Cancelled, on 4 October. The Darkness’s album release is followed by an extensive European tour from this November to March 2020.

IFF 2019 takes place from Tuesday 24 to Thursday 26 September in Camden, north London.

The conference programme was finalised last month with the announcement that Live Nation Belgium/Rock Werchter CEO Herman Schueremans will be this year’s keynote interviewee.

The IFF conference programme was finalised last month

Other conference content includes the traditional the Festival Season wrap-up panel, this  year overseen by UTA’s Greg Lowe; the Big Billing Debate, chaired by Melt! Booking’s Julia Gudzent, which sees panellists debate the always-controversial issue of the ordering of festival bills; and Niche Work (If You Can Get It), moderated by IQ’s Jon Chapple, which examines the proliferation of new genre-specific events.

This year’s IFF features additional agency partners, with 13 Artists, Solo Agency and Toutpartout joining longstanding partners CAA, Coda, WME, X-ray Touring, ITB, Primary Talent, opening party host UTA, ATC Live and Pitch and Smith. To make meetings between festivals and agents more efficient, IFF 2019 will debut a series of pop-up agency offices around the event. The temporary spaces will allow festivals to meet with most agencies without needing to travel between their ‘real’ offices.

Also new for 2019 is second outdoor networking area at Dingwalls, IFF’s longtime north London home, that will double the footprint of the event – and also allow a small additional number of festival delegates to attend – and two sets of dedicated meetings for all delegates.

The Knowledge Hub will invite leading innovators and solutions experts into IFF for a series of private 30-minute meetings on topics ranging from the latest festival tech to next generation ticketing and VIP opportunities, while the similar Green Hub welcomes leading practitioners to offer advice and expertise on environmental efforts by festivals, artists or companies.

For its fifth edition, IFF is also increasing the number of showcases: in addition to daytime agency shows at Dingwalls, Toutpartout, Dutch Export and Pop Farm will present shows at various venues around Camden on the evening of Wednesday 25 September.

For more information about IFF, including details on last-minute delegate passes, visit iff.rocks.

 


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