On The Afternoon Show today, presenter Kyle Wilkinson will be talking to Susie Jenkins, one of the organisers of Northumberland based independent festival, Out of the Trees.

Out of the Trees is an independent music festival that takes place annually in the small Northumbrian village of Warkworth.  It is the only alternative music festival in Northumberland and one of the most unique events on the North East music scene calendar.

The festival originally began in 2004 as a strange idea on a winter night and has gradually developed over the years to become a day-long festival that show-cases some of the most original musicians and artists from the North East and further afield.

This year the festival will be celebrating a sixth year of presenting new music with a line that includes a host of underground talent including amazingtunes.com acts Blood Oranges,  O’Messy Life, Holy Mammoth, and Beccy Owen.

All profits from this year’s event will be split between 2 very worthy causes: The Morden Tower and SPOWE Uganda

Find out more about Out of the Trees Festival over on the official website. You can hear Kyle talking to Susie about the festival on The Afternoon Show, from 3pm today, on Amazing Radio.

As this summer’s festival season moves into full swing amazingtunes found itself in amongst the sun-kissed masses last weekend, donning the shades and dancing it up at the Rockness festival following Spokes as they looked to impress the reveling crowds.

As part of our Sound08 competition held in March of this year we gave one lucky act the chance to get played on XFM and perform live at the Rockness Festival. The eventual winners Spokes last weekend took to the stage in Dores, on the shores of Loch Ness, with a point to prove. The heavily dance orientated line-up at this years event was a motion away from the more subtle and emotional guitar driven melodies of Spokes, however their departure from the intensities of the surrounding stages made them, for me, something of a stand out act.

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Opening with the instrumental track ‘We Like to Dance and Steal Things’ the band built a strong foundation from which to develop, moving into tracks like ‘Sleep it off’ and ‘Young People! All Together’ with a great enthusiasm. While the quieter moments were unfortunately often offset by the traveling bass from the other stages, Spokes’ ability to command a wall of sound made the large majority of the performance a powerful experience, with strong progressions and well weighted climaxes keeping the audience enthused throughout.

While having to compete against a line-up clash that saw the band scheduled to play at the same time as DJ Yoda and the Editors, the lads and lady from Manchester held their audience with great confidence and it certainly left myself with a smile on my face. Speaking with Matthew Baty, the drummer of Spokes, after the performance he said “It was a superb experience. Playing at the same event as so many great acts was a bit of a surreal experience, but really enjoyable. After it was over we decided to make sure that next year we’ll do what it takes to be playing at plenty more festivals.” And with lots of smiles after their performance from both on and off the stage I’m sure they won’t be disappointed.

The festival itself was a great show set in some of the most idyllic scenery north of the border, and with such great weather there was always going to be enjoyment to be had. Fatboy Slim called in the Saturday night, entertaining a massive crowd in front of the main-stage with a brilliantly thought-out set after Soulwax had stunned their patient fans with a live show in the Soulwax Arena, a show that was packed full of energy – and nothing short of amazing. Mylo, donning a vintage Scotland shirt, fed the crowd with healthy doses of bass and the Mystery Jets went down with great aplomb, their single ‘Two Doors Down’ getting an excited response. Underworld reminded us of why they were so successful all those years back, whipping the audience up into a frenzy with an extended version of Born Slippy, and then, of course, there was Spokes. While obviously not commanding quite the same level of interest as Johnny Burrell et al, this relatively new act, here to prove a point and reach new ears, stood tall and left their audience with something a little different to take home with them.

…amazingtunes