2023 lineups: Øya, Flow, Hurricane & Southside
Øya (NO), Flow (FI), Hurricane & Southside (DE), Paaspop (NL) and Welcome To Rockville (US) are the latest festivals to beef-up their 2023 festival line-ups.
Norway’s Øya festival has detailed its gender-balanced line-up for 2023, which includes Sigrid, FKA Twigs, Caroline Polachek, Amyl and the Sniffers, Devo, Håkan Hellstrom, Shygirl and TV Girl.
The Superstruct-backed festival, which will return to Oslo’s Tøyenparken between 8–12 August, will once again put sustainability at the forefront of its operation.
The site operates free of fossil fuels, with 98% of its power being renewable and all construction machinery is run on biofuel.
That approach is also applied to everything from recycling (75% of all waste is recycled, having been sorted by hand) to travel (98% of attendees arrive by bike, foot or public transport).
The Øya site operates free of fossil fuels, with 98% of its power being renewable
Superstruct’s Flow Festival has also revealed the first acts for next year’s edition in Helsinki, Finland, between 11 and 13 August.
FKA Twigs, Caroline Polachek, Suede, Devo, Amyl & The Sniffers, Shygirl, Jockstrap, 070 Shake and more will perform at the culture, music, arts and debate festival in the post-industrial area of Suvilahti.
In Germany, the 2023 editions of FKP Scorpio’s flagship festivals, Hurricane and Southside, are beginning to take shape.
Billy Talent, Muse, Die Ärzte, Kraftklub, Placebo, Casper, Peter Fox and Queens Of The Stone Age will top the bill for the twin events, which this year sold-out and attracted 150,000 attendees.
Southside and Hurricane will return to Neuhausen ob Eck and the Eichenring motorcycle speedway in Scheessel, respectively, between 16 to 18 June 2023.
Danny Wimmer Presents unveiled the line-up for its longest-running annual festival
In neighbouring country, the Netherlands, The Event Warehouse is putting the final touches on Paaspop 2023.
Limp Bizkit today (15 December) joined next year’s line-up which already included 90 names including Antoon, Armin van Buuren, Calum Scott and Danny Vera.
Davina Michelle, De Staat, dEUS, DI-Rect, Flemming, George Ezra, Goldband, Reinier Zonneveld, Rondé, S10, Son Mieux and Triggerfinger are also lined up for the festival, scheduled for 7–9 April 2023 at De Molenheide in Schijndel.
Also today, Danny Wimmer Presents unveiled the line-up for its longest-running annual festival, Welcome To Rockville (US).
Tool, Slipknot, Avenged Sevenfold, Pantera, Deftones, Rob Zombie, Godsmack, Queens of the Stone Age, Evanescence and Incubus are the first name to be announced for the 12th edition.
The event will return to Daytona International Speedway In Daytona Beach, Florida, between 18–21 May 2023. This year’s edition brought together 150,000 fans.
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Norway festivals cancelled, but small events to return
Concerts of up to 200 people will likely once again be permitted in Norway as of Friday 15 June, as the country’s live music sector begins its slow return to normality.
The first live events will return this week, with shows for up to 50 people permitted from this Thursday (7 May), providing a one-metre (3’3”) distance is kept between attendees. From 15 June, the government will also consider allowing events for up to 200 people should infection rates be kept under control, said health minister Bent Høie last week.
The concrete timetable for the lifting of restrictions on concerts – which follows a similar, much-talked-about announcement by Spanish authorities, where events of 30 people (in venues with over 90 capacity) may return from 11 May – welcomed tentatively by promoters’ association NKA, nevertheless comes too late for Norway’s large live events, with the country’s largest and best-known music festivals finally called off last week.
Bergenfest (scheduled for 10–13 June) and Tons of Rock (25–27 June), both owned by Live Nation, and Øya Festival, part of the Superstruct stable, will no longer take place in 2020, after the Norwegian government extended its ban on major live events until 1 September.
“For the larger industry players, events of up to 200 people will not even be close to being financially viable”
Large-scale live events are banned in most of continental Europe this summer to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Going further than Norway, the Netherlands has prohibited all festivals, concerts and club nights until 1 September, while in Switzerland, Ireland, Germany, Belgium and Denmark a ban is in place until 31 August. Hungary has banned mass gatherings until at least 15 August, and Luxembourg and Finland until 31 July. France, meanwhile, has given mid-July as the earliest date when events could go ahead, while Austria has identified the end of June.
“While it is positive that there are now clear signs that society can gradually be reopened, at the same time it will be a long time until we can be together as normal,” comments Norwegian Live Music Association (NKA) head Tone Østerdal. “Our industry was among the very first to be shut down, and will most likely be among the very last to open completely. In the meantime, the focus must be to keep concert organisers and the rest of the players in the music industry afloat.
“For some of the smallest, allowing events for up to 200 people could represent such an opportunity, and I think we will see many positive initiatives going forward. At the same time, we should not underestimate what maintaining the infection prevention rules will require of promoters – and for the larger industry players, events of up to 200 people will not even be close to being financially viable.”
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“It’s important to be a role model”: Øya gears up for 20th year
Norway’s Øya Festival will next week mark its 20th anniversary with the biggest event to date, according to festival founder Claes Olsen.
Øya Festival (Øyafestivalen), held since 2014 in Tøyen Park, Oslo, has sold out every year since 2004, when it was headlined by the Streets and Air and attracted 38,000 visitors. For 2019’s event, on 6–10 August, the Øya team have boosted capacity to 20,000 per day at the festival site – with more than 100,000 visitors expected over the course of the event, including at Øyanatt (Øya Night) club shows at venues across Oslo.
“We’ve had record sales this year,” says Olsen, who reveals full-week tickets sold out before the summer. “Saturday day tickets, with Norwegian headliners Karpe, sold out before Christmas,” he adds, while “Wednesday, with the Cure, James Blake and Blood Orange, sold out months ago; Friday, with Robyn, Christine and the Queens and Girl in Red, sold out weeks ago; and we only have a few hundred tickets left for Thursday, with Tame Impala, Erykah Badu and Sigrid…”
Part of the increase in capacity for 2019 was necessitated by soaring artist fees – 30% over the last two years alone, reckons Olsen – but it has enabled the festival to book arguably its most impressive international line-up yet, complemented by a strong contingent of Norwegian talent.
Olsen, who is also Øya’s lead booker, attributes the festival’s run of back-to-back sell-outs to “believing in our own profile” – booking acts the team want to see, rather than “desperately chasing trends” – as well its progressive attitude towards the issues of the day, including sustainability and gender parity among staff and performers.
“It’s important to think about the future and not be too nostalgic about our history”
For the third year in a row, Øyafestivalen has a gender-balanced bill (49% women this year, 48% in 2017–18), which “proves that we can sell tickets with lots of amazing female acts all over the line-up”, says Olsen, who adds that 65% of the festival’s volunteers are female, along with more than half of its staff. (As is Øya’s CEO, Tonje Kaada.)
Olsen says that while festival bookers “spend a lot of time talking about this issue” (gender parity), it’s “not too difficult to manage it, or to sell tickets or anything. There’s still a long way to go, but we’re heading in the right direction – there are more and more female artists coming through and, especially among the Norwegian acts, there are a lot to choose from.”
As for staff, Olsen says even 20 years ago, “as a group of friends doing the festival voluntarily alongside other jobs, it was important [to us] to be a professional organisation and always recruit the best people – and naturally lots of them were female. But you need to be conscious of it and not overlook it; it’s important to be a positive role model and get new people on board, rather than scaring them away from getting into the music industry…”
On sustainability, meanwhile, the festival has been run on completely renewable energy since 2009, and all food is organic, with almost 40% of the 100,000 portions of food sold being meat free. Additionally, all food packaging is compostable, all beverages are served in reusable cups – a reduction of 90% in plastic use since 2016 – and over 60% of the festival’s waste is reused for new products.
The event’s “environmental- and climate-friendly operations, food and drink that’s gone far beyond sausages and beer, and social consciousness in addition to all the music” were among the factors that impressed Superstruct Entertainment, James Barton’s private equity-backed festival group, enough to invest in Øya in 2018, Olsen’s fellow co-founder, Linn Lunder, told DN.
“We always recruited the best people, and naturally lots of them were female. But you need to be conscious of it”
How has that deal – which saw Øyafestivalen and Superstruct invest in each other, with Olsen and Lunder acquiring an ownership interest in Superstruct – affected, positively or otherwise, Øya 2019? Not much, according Olsen, who says the first year has been “mainly been getting to know each other better, with new festivals coming aboard”.
However, he expects the Superstruct network – which now includes Denmark’s Down the Drain, Flow Festival in Finland and several ex-Global events in the UK, among others – to include “more collaboration in future years”, especially in coordinating artist booking.
Other than handing out a big 20th birthday cake to the first people on site, Olsen says Øya’s 20th year – unlike, say, Glastonbury’s 40th, which saw festival founder Michael Eavis join Stevie Wonder for an impromptu rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ – will be a low-key affair.
“We’re keeping it a little bit quiet; we don’t have it on the posters or the ads, for example,” he says. “We feel like it’s important to think about the future and not be too nostalgic about our history – and I don’t think people really care that much about it when they’re buying tickets anyway. Besides, every festival is better than the last year anyway…”
Øya Festival 2019 takes place Tuesday 6 to Saturday 10 August.
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Market report: Norway
If money doesn’t make us happy, then how do we explain Norway, which is both the world’s happiest country and, thanks to its oil wealth, Europe’s second richest?
Maybe money isn’t such a curse after all. Or maybe Norway’s diverting live scene keeps those rich kid blues at bay. The smallest Scandinavian nation by population, with the fiddliest coastline, it houses a disproportionately deluxe live market, with all the international shows and domestic touring talent a nation of 5.2m people could reasonably expect, and a festival scene that is thoroughly embedded in its culture.
“Festivals have taken over Norwegian social life now,” says Torbjørn Heitmann Valum, CEO of Norske Konsertarrangører, the country’s live business trade body. “That’s all people do in the summer: they go to a festival, meet up with friends and see bands.” Events such as Norwegian Wood, Øya, Findings, Picnic in the Park and OverOslo, which all take place in the capital, are among the prominent evidence of this, but in the summer, Norway is swarming with festivals from top to bottom – not just national ones, but regional and local ones, too, in virtually every town.
“That’s all people do in the summer: they go to a festival, meet up with friends and see bands”
Likewise, Oslo is the prime destination for most international artists, but second and third cities Bergen and Trondheim have their moments too, and Norwegian music is strong and varied enough that the country’s live business could, if pushed, run on little else. Once famous solely for A-ha, Norway’s talent machine these days produces a far broader range of artists than before.
“Yes, it’s a really good time,” says Atomic Soul’s Peer Osmundsvaag. “I remember growing up thinking Norway was probably the most rubbish country in the world, with only A-ha…”
These days, artists are breaking out of Norway all over the place. Notable names include hit-making DJ Kygo, pop twins Marcus & Martinus and X Factor offshoot Astrid S; diverse singer-songwriters such as Susanne Sundfør, Maria Mena, Anna of the North and Aurora; and indie-rockers Kakkmaddafakka – part of the so-called New Bergen Wave, which follows the original wave in the 1990s that produced Röyksopp, Kings of Convenience and Annie. Norwegian artists even occasionally manage to get noticed in Sweden, which would once have been unheard of.
Read the rest of this feature in the digital edition of IQ 73:
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