Are You Listening? 2013 - Preview

Today we start our festival previews for 2013 and what better way to start with than the Reading Festival? No, not THAT Reading Festival, but the altogether smaller, easier to survive, all for a good cause Reading Festival that is known as Are You Listening?

Are You Listening? is a brand new one day multi-venue event that will take place on Saturday the 27^th April in 6 venues within Reading town centre with all proceeds being donated to Reading Mencap, a charity for children and adults with a learning disability.

The event showcases a variety of local artists as well as a few bigger names, a number of whom have featured on Breaking More Waves in either the recent or distant past.

As with all multi-venue one day events all the loathsome parts of traditional outdoor camping music festivals can be thrown out of the window. Everyone will be clean, look pristine and smell good, queues for portaloos won’t be a consideration, nobody will care about the weather and afterwards punters can all retire to a warm, safe bed for an undisturbed night’s sleep rather than finding some loved up drug loon blabbering small talk at the top of their voice two feet away from your tent all night.

Are You Listening? acts as a gentle warm up for some of the bigger multi-venue festivals that hit the UK over the next couple of months such as Great Escape, Sound City and Dot to Dot. What better way to spend £10 than catch a days’ worth of live music safe in the knowledge you’ve also helped a charity? Some of the bands on the bill would be near the ticket price just to see on their own, so this really is a bargain. Last week the organisers announced they had sold 100 advance tickets so far. We’re pretty sure that both they and Mencap would love plenty more sales than this, so if you’re free and in the Reading area on Saturday 27 April why not grab your ticket here.

Update: The festival now has a new website here where stage times can be found. 

Acts include As Elephants Are, Dan Le Sac, Perfect Life, Mr Fogg, Stagecoach, Haze and Tripwires as well as these 3 recommendations from Breaking More Waves.

The Good Natured

Anyone who’s had the opportunity to see The Good Natured live recently will know that lead singer Sarah has become quite the front woman. Expect arms aloft crazy dancing and pop tunes that bubble around the edges like 5-HT below.

Mt Wolf

Mt Wolf mix gentle acoustic sounds with electronics and beautiful female vocals to create eye widening and inspiring songs. They created significant on line buzz last year with their debut EP Life Size Ghosts and have just followed it up with a second - the rather wonderful Hypolight EP.

Coastal Cities

If indie rock is your thing but you’re partial to a bit of twitchy hip thrusting on the dance floor then Coastal Cities will be your thing. For fans of Two Door Cinema Club, Foals, The Drums and the like.

As with all festivals that we preview, we’ll be bringing a review of Are You Listening? shortly after it finishes. You’ll probably also find us doing some as it happens tweets here.