Four performance that I will be keeping an eye on during Sheffield’s upcoming music festival

So the Music in the sun website has gone live, along with the usual MySpace plus Facebook fan and event pages. A few of the acts have caught my eye, and at just £9.50 for a two-day advance ticket, it seems good value.

However, it is frustrating that the line-up doesn’t specify when many of the bands are actually playing over the weekend. The arena performers seem to be better mapped out, but being more of an indie fan, it would be helpful to have a proper running order for the main stage on each day, too. Perhaps nearer the time this information will be made available.

It is good to see some local acts represented on bill. Here are some of the performers I will be looking out for:

Kings Have Long Arms
Described by Wikipedia as ‘rocktronica’, this Sheffield-based act has been around for a few years and collaborated with several well-known musicians including Phil Oakey (the Human League), Mira (Ladytron), Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce (former Smiths), Denise Johnson (A Certain Ratio) and Ray Dorset (Mungo Jerry). The excellent single Big umbrella (featuring Candie Payne) was released at the beginning of the year:

Tiny Dancers
Another Sheffield-based group, this indie-country-rock band signed to Parlophone in 2006 and last summer released their debut album, Free school milk. Their singles have had some airplay and entered the top 40 but they are yet to have a major breakthrough hit. This is the catchy and upbeat I will wait for you:

Levi Roots
If you watch Dragon’s Den, the you will know about Levi Roots’ (real name Keith) appearance in the last series of the show, where he was awarded money to produce Reggae Reggae Sauce. By the looks of things, he was a musician prior to this so he should definitely be considered more than just a novelty at Music in the sun. And if his performance successfully captures any of the charm and charisma that came across on television then we should be in for a treat. This is Reggae reggae sauce (the song) on Dragon’s Den:

Artery
If you listened to the recent BBC Radio 2 documentary in which Jarvis Cocker took listeners on a tour of Sheffield (still available to listen to here) then you would have heard 70s/80s post-punk band Artery being mentioned, as the former Pulp frontman was a big fan. Although they didn’t have any big hits, the band are seen as one of the big influential Sheffield bands from the time and reformed in 2007. This is John Peel’s favourite song, and by far their most well-known track, Into the garden:

The Artery and Tiny Dancers MySpace pages say that they are each playing on 2 August, so hedge your bets it will be the Saturday for those two bands.