Nozstock The Hidden Valley is delighted to announce The Futureheads as Saturday night headliners for 2012 alongside D&B powerhouse DJ Zinc, UK ska exponents Imperial Leisure and live breakbeat act The Raged.
There will also be a new stage at Nozstock this year, Tent of Temporary Thought, a proverbial literary feast which will appear alongside festival favourite Bantam of the Opera, a theatre stage by day and Velveteen Valley Caberet Lounge by night.
Sunderland post-punk power quartet The Futureheads burst onto the scene in the early Noughties. After a string of releases it was their cover version of Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love that firmly etched them into the public consciousness garnering a No.8 slot in the UK singles chart.
Since then they have released five critically lauded albums, launched their own record label and picked up a legion of fans with their frenetic live show. Known for their blend of guitar stabs and rich, tonal four-part acapella harmonies, they are set to close Saturday night in style on the Orchard Stage.
Meanwhile headlining the Garden Stage on Friday is founding member of the now legendary Ganja Crew/Tru Playaz collectives DJ Zinc. His 1995 club smasher Super Sharp Shooter and speaker-busting bootleg of The Fugees Ready Or Not won him international acclaim and spawned the Tru Playaz club night which he set up with fellow TP cohorts Pascal and DJ Hype. Also just confirmed are North London ska-punk rockers Imperial Leisure, Kal Lavelle (who recently toured with Ed Sheeran), The Caezers, Jake Bugg, Kentish Fire, Sicknote and We Steal Thieves to name a few.
But it’s not just the music line-up that will delight this year, as there are many nooks and crannies and secret wooded glades to discover. During the day the Bantam Of The Opera tent offers a myriad of theatrical shenanigans where one can learn circus tricks, belly dancing and acrobatics or soak up puppet shows and side-splitting theatre. Midnight marks the start of the Velveteen Valley Cabaret Lounge – tassels and glamour are in store here, featuring ring mistress Ophelia Bitz on Saturday in an eclectic mix of cabaret, humour, song and dance.
Elsewhere The Tent Of Temporary Thought will pop-up throughout the festival with a selection of the UK’s finest wordsmiths (such as the winner of the UK young story yeller of the year award Rachael Rose Reid and leading Welsh poet Ifor Thomas) delivering a wide range of talks, poetry, spoken-word and forums. For those who feel the creative itch themselves, the new and improved arts and crafts area is an immersive hotbed of fun featuring classes and demonstrations of such forgotten arts as chalk carving, haberdashery, coppicing, spoon carving and blacksmith forgery.