Category Archives: Hedonism

You would never guess, given how texturally rich and nuanced it is, that Pickwicks LoveJoys comes as the result of a back-to-the-drawing-board approach, quickly written and recorded, but thats exactly the case.

We released our first record, Cant Talk Medicine, in 2013, vocalist Galen Disston tells the Straight in a call to his Seattle home. We toured it for about a year and a half, and came home and recorded about 30 or 40 songs. And then we scrapped em.

That material, he explains, was a little more garage than their previous releasenot fully punk, but a lot of that early Northwest-influenced, raw, rock n roll, R&B stuff. Initially, we kinda thought that was the direction we were going to go, but a lot of that music was a little too masculine-feeling, and us trying too hard, I think, to be something we werent.

Almost everything you hear on LoveJoys, Disston says, is new creations that we took not fully formed into the studio to work with award-winning Seattle producer Erik Blood. We wrote the album in about three months, and three weeks later it was recorded and finished.

Partially thanks to Bloods keen ear, the album breaks Pickwick out of the 1960s mould of Cant Talk Medicine.

I think we were trying to find a way out of the soul tag that wed been pigeonholed withneo-soul throwback or retro or whatever. Erik helped ease us into the 1970s. He made such a cool universe in his studio for us, and the songs were this kind of separate escapist universe, too.

Different listeners will hear different influences. The Rickshaws owner and booker Mo Tarmohamed, bringing Pickwick back to town to celebrate the venues upcoming eighth anniversary, hears Prince, Macy Gray, and even Talking Heads and Jimi Hendrix, though he notes the album is so beautifully crafted that all of the musical elements work perfectly.

But theres also a notable disco influence, a form being rehabilitated since the disco sucks backlash of the late 1970s and 80s, which even Disston took part in.

I was pretty prejudiced against disco and even 70s soul, Disston admits, like with the saxophones on Whats Going On. But something happened to me in the last couple of years.

He began exploring left-field disco pioneers like Arthur Russell, and learned to appreciate the amazing restraint that Marvin Gaye shows in his vocal stylings.

It just sort of eased me up, Disston says.

In Time features an obvious riff on Andrea Trues More More More. (And even the drums are pretty ABBA, Disston adds.) The strutting bass lines that kick off Turncoat suggest a grooved-out Stayin Alive, and the vocal harmonies are pure Bee Gees, circa 1978.

And thats where the real difference with Cant Talk Medicine comes to light: while songs like Hacienda Motel foregrounded Disstons charisma and strength as a lead singer, the layered approach to songcraft on LoveJoys allows him to lean back into the sound.

After touring the first record, I kind of felt the effects of singing my balls off every night for six nights a week, he says. Cant Talk Medicine is kind of exhausting for me to listen to because Im singing so hard, if that makes any sense.

The ethereal escapes and quasi hedonism of LoveJoys are a welcome relief and may just prevent Pickwick from being pigeonholed again.

Up to this point weve been known mainly as a live act, Disston acknowledges. Our first record, I dont think, succeeded in establishing us as more than that. This was an opportunity to make a product you can listen to, something that can have a life in your car.

Pickwick plays the Rickshaw Theatre on Saturday (July 29).

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Seattle's Pickwick dodges neo-soul tag on discofied LoveJoys - Straight.com

Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) has announced its annual event will return to Cardiff for its fourth year in October.

The Festival Congress will play host to an incredible Pseudoscience theme, set to play homage to the nonsensical and weird experiments made by scientists and festival promoters alike.

The standout event will be led by a keynote by artistic director and CEO of Manchester International Festival, John McGrath, in addition to quick fire talks fromrenowned author Zoe Cormier about her book Sex, drugs and rock n roll: The science of hedonism and the hedonism of science, and John Kampfner, chief executive of the Creative Industries Federation, who will speak about creative industry red lines on Brexit.

There will also be a Question time style panel exploring political issues in relation to festivals and featuring some leading lights of the independent festival world, with other key topics at the conference including event security, welfare, booking processes, up scaling small festivals and creative production. Another headline panel discussion will explore the next steps of AIFs Safer spaces campaign, which reiterated the zero tolerance approach that festivals have to sexual assault with a 24 hour coordinated website black out in May.

Held in Cardiffs Wales Millennium Centre (WMC) on 30-31 October, the Festival Congress is a major fixture in the festival industry calendar.

Were back for a fourth year with Festival Congress, the ultimate conference and festival party for the independents, said AIF co-founder, Rob da Bank. Were proud of how essential this event has become and all at AIF HQ are buzzing to be joining the dots between festival promotion and science this year, in what promises to be a packed and extremely fun couple of days in Cardiff.

Attendees include notable festival organisers from the likes of Glastonbury, Bestival, Boomtown Fair, Kendal Calling, Shambala, End of the Road, Liverpool Sound City and many more. The event also invites speakers from every corner of the music sphere with a speaker alumni of Jude Kelly OBE (artistic Ddirector, Southbank Centre), Huw Stephens (Radio One and Swn Festival co-founder), Simon Parkes (founder, Brixton Academy), Professor Tim OBrien (Jodrell Bank observatory), Robert Richards (commercial director, Glastonbury) and many more.

Link:

Association of Independent Festivals announce Festival Congress ... - Access All Areas (press release) (registration)

It's strange how six months can feel like six exhausting years when they've produced nothing but a string of nonsensical superlatives.

As Donald Trump celebrates the first eighth of his ridiculous "amazing, stupendous, unsurpassed" presidency, we mere mortals are left to ponder what we have learned. Well, here are some takeaways:

Facts do not matter to this White House. Trump has publicly lied about important matters more than 100 times since becoming president. These are not just equivocations open to dispute; they're flat-out, verifiable untruths. For example, he said he has accomplished more and signed more bills into law than any previous president. Not true. His staff follows his lead, disseminating statements that are lies.

Trump not only failed to drain the swamp, he deepened and widened it. He has filled top posts with Wall Streeters and business cronies, doling out jobs like mints to loyal minions. After he promised not to touch Medicaid, which serves the disabled, poor and elderly in nursing homes, we were introduced to a Trumpcare plan that called for disqualifying 75 million and taking another 22 million off health insurance.

He is a costly public servant. He is on track in his first year to spend more taxpayer money on personal travel than President Barack Obama did in eight. We also pay for security at Trump Tower, his hotels and his golf courses.

Trump does not care that he has the lowest approval rating of any president since polling started (about 70 years). His base loves him even though he has done nothing for them since taking office.

Trump has set the precedent that a president's conflicts of interest do not matter. Refusing to divest himself of his holdings, he has put his son Junior (the one who loves meeting with Kremlin operatives) in charge. His wealthy daughter and son-in-law have offices in the White House. His hotels draw foreign leaders who want to curry favor. Fees at his Mar-a-Lago golf resort have doubled to $200,000.

Getting rid of excessive and overlapping regulations is one thing. Gutting environmental protection and consumer protection regulations as Trump is doing is another. His administration has taken an astonishing number of actions to further the interests of big business to the detriment of Americans who love their parks, want to breathe clean air, drink clean water and buy products that won't hurt their children.

The artful dealmaker has not managed to make any good deals. Even with a GOP-controlled House and Senate, he has not repealed Obamacare. Instead he sabotages it by eliminating advertising, shortening the enrollment period and not enforcing the mandate to buy insurance or pay a tax to keep premiums low. Wages are not increasing. Exporters of American goods and services will be hurt by the lack of free trade he is engineering. No wall. No tax reform. No infrastructure plan.

The number of investigations caused by Trump's inexplicable fondness for Vladimir Putin, the Russian thief, thug and murderer, is unparalleled for a first term. Trump refuses to admit Russia meddled in our elections yet wants a national registry of all Americans' personal information to root out voter fraud the experts say does not exist. Hey, Russia, Trump will make it easy for you to re-elect him.

The United States is no longer the leader of the free world and fighter for human rights in the eyes of our once closest allies. After seeing Trump up close and personal at international meetings, some say openly they may never again trust us.

Trump's misogyny, hedonism, lack of discipline, coarse language, bullying and refusal to read briefing papers or attempt to learn what he doesn't know diminish us. The man who convinced millions to watch him say "You're fired" every week parlayed celebrity into the White House, but the applause is fading.

-- Ann McFeatters is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service. Readers may send her email at amcfeatters@nationalpress.com.

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Ann McFeatters: What we've learned from 6 months of Trump - Columbia Daily Tribune

Prefer low-key movies of past to the CGI-bombastic blockbusters? Looking for a string of golden oldies to binge on? Let TV comedian and classic film fanatic Vic Reeves point you to six of the best forgotten gems

The Flying Deuces (1939)

Laurel and Hardy join the French Foreign Legion to forget Ollies spurned marriage proposal. Fine business with smelling salts, mangle and biplane.

Woman in A Dressing Gown (1957)

Classy British kitchen-sink drama pivoting around a torrid domestic love triangle. Yvonne Mitchell shines as the put-upon wife.

Saturday Night And Sunday Morning (1960)

Vics favourite film: Albert Finneys working-class everybloke maintains a precarious work/hedonism balance when responsibility rears its ugly head.

Whistle Down The Wind (1961)

A childrens favourite with Christian allegories from director Bryan Forbes: three kids hide fugitive Alan Bates in a barn, believing him to be Jesus.

Hell Drivers (1957)

DEATH IS AT EVERY BEND! screams the trailer for this punchy tyre-screecher from Zulu director Cy Endfield, with Stanley Baker as a newly recruited extreme trucker.

Villain (1971)

A less-typical colour choice, this thriller (left) has Richard Burton struggling with a cockney accent as a bisexual gangster. Written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (Porridge) with Godfather actor Al Lettieri.

Read the rest here:

Vic Reeves reveals his top six favourite classic movies - Radio Times

Every person has their own definition of hedonism, but we could all agree it implies indulging in some of the finer things in life: food, wine, art, and other various delights.

Now imagine all of those united in a single gorgeous setting wouldn't that make for a perfect evening? Every pleasant experience becomes more memorable when combined with enchanting ambiance and a handful of like-minded bons vivants, so instead of imagining, it's best to venture out and seek opportunities to enjoy everything life has to offer. The Adriatic is a treasure trove of hedonistic oases scattered all over the coast and the islands, and you'll have plenty of chances to spend your summer evenings immersed in an amazing atmosphere, delving into gourmet wonders and appreciating the local art and culture in company of other guests.

The best example of this was the recent opening of the exhibition of Damir Vrdeljak Mandeta in the Heritage Hotel Martinis Marchi. Located in Maslinica on the island of olta, the luxurious hotel has a home in a gorgeous historic castle, its tranquil ambiance providing a perfect setting for a display of charming maritime-themed sculptures.

A prolific artist, writer and sailor, Mandeta blends together his passions seamlessly. His sculptures are made out of two most rudimentary materials metal and wood, merged together in shapes that evoke images of ships preparing to sail away toward the open sea. They are solid, straightforward and humble, and yet they have a certain finesse to them, a form that escapes narrow defining and allows the viewer to create his own associations.

As Mandeta uses parts of old, run-down boats to make his sculptures, he's literally making it possible for them to live forever. He searches for material on beaches and bays, looks for inspiration in little local ports. He once stated that the magic of creating art continues to exist even after the pieces are finished, as his thoughts always keep searching for a new path, a new colour or a new form. "Nature provides an eternal lesson on how to make other people happy, as beauty surrounds us all. Sometimes it's necessary to scratch under that invisible glow to let the beauty come out to the surface. I see a piece of wood or metal, and I instantly know what the finished sculpture is going to look like", the artist said.

The title of the exhibition, Refuli, means gusts of wind in Croatian. It'd be hard to come up with a better name for the array of darling sculpted boats and ships, whose imaginary sails wait to be filled with fresh breaths of Adriatic air. Before they gently glide away, the sculptures will spend the summer safely moored at Martinis Marchi as part of their seasonal art programme if you missed the opening night, there's still time to go see the lovely exhibition.

The authentic atmosphere of the historic castle overlooking the marina perfectly pairs with maritime motives that are currently embellishing the halls. If someone asked you what boats make you think of, one of the first things to come to mind might be freedom, a desire underlying all our travels and adventures. That's what we all strive for when we manage to get away from work and other everyday troubles in order to spend a couple of weeks on the coast a liberating, all-encompassing sense of freedom. There's no better way to express that than through art, and there's no better opportunity to enjoy such an experience than resting your eyes on Mandeta's work. Martinis Marchi awaits.

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Immortal Sails: Damir Vrdoljak Mandeta at Martinis Marchi - Total Croatia News

Magnetic Magazine (blog)

Farr Festival Saturday 2017 Review: Floating Points, Omar-S Battle The Sound Magnetic Magazine (blog) Here lay our first small disappointment; after three days of glitter-spangled hedonism, those who had been hitting it hard two nights in a row already were late to rise. Nonetheless, Farr's jaunty afternoon and evening lineup of DJs played across the ...

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Farr Festival Saturday 2017 Review: Floating Points, Omar-S Battle The Sound - Magnetic Magazine (blog)

There are some who think there is no God, but the evidence for God is overwhelming (Movement on the move, Faith & Values article, Friday). Nevertheless, they hold onto that belief because it gives liberty to hedonism.

Hedonism is rejected by many atheists, but for no good reason. Bertrand Russel once wrote, We feel that the man who brings widespread happiness at the expense of misery to himself is a better man than the man who brings unhappiness to others and happiness to himself. I do not know of any rational ground for this view.

Russell was a secularist; what values did he hold and, for that matter, for what reason did he hold them? His daughter, Katharine, took these words from his autobiography, thus an accurate conveying of a despairing sentiment, suggesting the values of a secularist have no foundations and are fluid.

In the battle of ideas, especially on college campuses, secularism and theism should be made available to each student to choose on his and her own. Let the debates begin, and let not the campuses shut them down because one might be conservative and the other progressive/liberal.

The Rev. Ron Thomas

Sunrush Church of Christ

Chillicothe

See the article here:

Letter: Encourage open debate of secularism - Columbus Alive - Columbus Alive

Jessica Lange in American Horror Story, Francois Arnaud in Midnight, Texas and Anna Paquin in True Blood. Composite: REX/Getty Images/HBO

Ryan Murphy. Shonda Rhimes. Noah Hawley. Equally deserving of a place alongside these architects of modern television is Charlaine Harris perhaps an odd choice, considering the fact that the longtime novelist has never directly gotten her hands in the TV game. But as the writer behind the hot and heavy fantasy novels on which True Blood and the upcoming Midnight, Texas, are based, shes done a lot to shape the current landscape of the supernatural on the small screen. For better and, eventually, for worse her approach to longform storytelling has colored much of what followed True Blood in its genre. And as the next major Harris adaptation touches down on the network airwaves, it can learn from the successes and shortcomings of its enchanted, perpetually horny forebears.

True Blood had the good fortune of arriving during a time when national interest in vampires and their lore had spiked at an all-time high, but the skill with which it sold itself set it apart from a large pack. The hothouse romance between Sookie Stackhouse and vampire hunk Bill Compton fused the supernatural amusements of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a soap opera structure that favored season-long arcs over monster-of-the-week paranormal-procedural fare. But the real secret to the shows success laid in creator Alan Balls undying quest to top the last provocation. He capitalized on the elasticity of magic, a concept that essentially eliminated all narrative restrictions on his over-the-top hedonistic style. The show began with the spotlight on vampires, but their weird universe rapidly grew in size, eventually incorporating werewolves, werepanthers, erotic fairies and parallel dimensions. Whenever things threatened to get stale, Ball could just throw a new occult variable into the equation for added freshness.

This worked like a charm, until it didnt. The hazard of this anything-goes ethos of storytelling, which orients itself around the spectacle of novelty, is that it can only outdo itself so many times before spinning out of control. Unmoored from any laws governing its world, the show lost all sense of grounding and went haywire. Plot twists were freely doled out and undone when they became inconvenient, character traits were established then contradicted, and the supernatural elements eventually lost their luster as well. The shows final years were sloppy and scattershot, a far cry from the inspired lunacy of its sophomore season (also known as the orgy season).

This method of constant reinvention to hold viewer interest motivated the recent anthology boom as well. American Horror Story, for one, followed True Bloods same path, but with a series-long decline in quality condensed to each individual season. By beginning anew with a fresh premise and fresh cast every year, Ryan Murphy gave himself a reset button that could wipe away any and all writerly convolutions with a season finale. As such, every new batch of American Horror Story episodes begins bizarre and thrilling, only to eventually sputter into total incoherence about seven or eight hours in. The anthology structure freed Murphy up to cover more ground in the realm of the supernatural, but more than that, it gave him an escape route.

Other shows have devised ways to make the inevitable muddling of internal logic into a feature rather than a bug. After 12 seasons and 264 episodes, Supernatural is still going strong because its embraced its quirks of continuity to the point that the staggeringly complicated storyline has grown into a joke of its own. To make it work, the shows been forced to retreat into its insular fanbase, but that same core viewership has been devoted and sizable enough to render the show viable seemingly indefinitely. If a shows going to have to occupy a niche, its in that shows best interest to fully ensnare its audience.

Midnight, Texas, is already at a disadvantage. NBCs standards and practices department wont let fly half of what True Blood got away with on HBO, meaning one of supernatural fictions most reliable generators of intrigue and titillation has been taken off the table. But theyve still got plenty of lurid material to hold viewers interest, from psychics to witches to, yes, vampires. Now, the show lives or dies by the extent to which it can control itself while still maintaining that out-of-control feeling. Striking that elusive balance between the illusion of total narrative anarchy and an underlying sense of order requires delicacy and discipline. Historically, those have not been defining traits of Charlaine Harris bustling imagined world, a new series and new creative team means a new lease on serialization. Instead of hooking viewers by striving to do it all, perhaps this series can learn to keep them hooked by doing a few things expertly.

More here:

How True Blood's supernatural hedonism changed genre television - The Guardian

I thought I was a beat, but I was just a boy

Notes on Re-Reading Kerouac in my 50s

I think one of the reasons the novel is attractive to readers in their early 20s, in particular, is it's simplistic anti-establishment bias.

Consider the section in which Sal and the fang visit Old Bull Lee. Bull -- the book version of William S. Burroughs -- is a libertarian-anarchist junkie who loves his guns, experiments with all manner of drugs, reads voraciously, and is an aggressive skeptic, a pessimist of the first order, who trusts no one and nothing. He did things "merely for experience" (143), had multiple personalities and a

sentimental streak about the old days in America, especially 1910, when you could get morphine in a drugstore without a prescription and Chinese smoked opium in their evening widows and the country was wild and brawling and free, with abundance and any kind of freedom for everyone. (144-145)

He hated bureaucracy, which I think is a common human feeling, but he also hated "liberals; then cops," an all-purpose dislike of anything that might interfere with fulfilling one's desires. Remi Boncoeur, Sal's old prep-school buddy, has a similar world view, an ingrained antipathy toward authority. Remi's term for authority figures who impose limits is Dostioffski -- a bastardization of Dostoevski, who Sal has been reading. The Dostioffskis of the world are there to keep you down; they are "the man," the straight world, parental. They interfere with the hedonism that drives Sal and his friends, which is all about kicks.

There is a scene in San Francisco that allows me to how my view of the book has changed over the years, perhaps more than any other. Sal is staying with Remi, who is working as a security guard. He gets Sal a job, but there is not enough money coming in so they supplement their income by stealing food and supplies from the former military camp at which they work. Sal and Remi break into the barracks cafeteria, which they do frequently to stock up on supplies. Once inside, Sal goes "to the soda fountain."

Here, realizing a dream of mine from infancy, I took the cover off the chocolate ice cream and stuck my hand in wrist-deep and hauled me up a skewer of ice cream and licked at it. Then we got ice-cream boxes and stuffed them, poured chocolate over and sometimes strawberries too, then walked around in the kitchens, opened ice boxes, to see what we could take home in our pockets. (70)

Sal views these break-ins as risky, but justified. He doesn't necessarily put this justification in words, but he does describe it as part of a bigger adventure, as just another necessary experience. And the younger me thrilled to this, understood implicitly the anti-establishment, anti-authority motivation. Stick it to the man, my younger self says.

My older self, my 54-year-old self, cringes at this simplistic reading. There is injustice -- the camp is paying starvation wages, which makes the theft necessary -- but Remi and Sal's actions are still morally suspect, at best, and exist outside of politics when what is needed to address the issue is a political response. This individual act of rebellion, as satisfying as it may be, will do nothing to alter the broader dynamics and, in fact, may leave a worse situation for those who come after Remi and Sal are long gone.

This comes up through out the book -- authority and rules exist as impediments and nothing more, without distinction, without any sense that some may be necessary. It is very much an American mode of thought, a bowdlerization of Emerson on self-reliance or Thoreau's jeremiad in "Civil Disobedience" against immoral government power. Sal, Old Bull, Remi, Dean view authority itself as immoral, because it interferes with their pleasure or their intellectual curiosity.

Sal, for instance, walks by themselves to one of the levees of the Mississippi, near Old Bull Lee's house.

I wanted to sit on the muddy bank and dig the Mississippi River; instead of that I had to look at it with my nose against a wire fence. When you start separating the people from their rivers what have you got? "Bureaucracy!" says Old Bull; he sits with Kafka on his lap, the lamp burns above him, he snuffs, thfump. His old house creaks. And the Montana log rolls by in the big black river of the night. "Tain't nothin but bureaucracy. And unions! Especially unions!" (148)

less a cornerstone work of environmental literature than the original cabin porn: a fantasy about rustic life divorced from the reality of living in the woods, and, especially, a fantasy about escaping the entanglements and responsibilities of living among other people.

It is a fanatic's book, a "paean to living purely, with all the moral judgment that the word implies" (Schulz). Walden was published nearly a decade after Thoreau's seminal political essay, "Civil Disobedience," which has been used as the foundation protest movements as varied as the push for India independence to the American civil rights movement.

It is a solitary protest, a personal protest. It is steeped in American individualism, and ultimately lacks the force the effect change. It is a personal complaint absent a movement, though it is built upon the same moral questioning one finds in Erich Fromm's On Disobedience and the writings of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The Beats constantly rage against the straight world, against the impositions of authority, but they rarely -- at least in the decade after World War II -- fully consider what amounts to true injustice and what it takes to push back. Small individual protests and minor criminal acts stand in for a declaration of individuality, and it is rare that Sal or Dean, in particular, consider how their actions create ripples in the universe, that they affect others in ways they do not foresee or perhaps care to see.

This is hedonism run amok. Hedonism as a philosophy seeks to maximize pleasure, but it also has an eye on the way our actions affect others. It is an extreme form of utilitarianism, which seeks to maximize good -- an action is judged as positive if it creates more good than bad, if more people benefit than are hurt. Hedonism functions the same way, but the Beats, many among the Sixties generation, many of the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street, ignore the damage that can be left in their wake.

This is a young-man's attitude, but it has infected the broader culture -- think of all the dopey t-shirts available in t-shirt shops that glorify the act of getting falling down drunk or proclaiming the right to be an unmitigated asshole.

Im automatically attracted to beautiful women I just start kissing them, its like a magnet. Just kiss. I dont even wait. And when youre a star, they let you do it. You can do anything," he said in the 2005 conversation. "Grab 'em by the pussy."

And this sums up our current cultural moment, one in which rich and powerful men like Trump and Bill Cosby, Bill Clinton, Ben Rothlesberger, R. Kelly and so many other feel as if there are no limits, as if everything including women's bodies and minds are their's regardless of whether there is consent.

But I've gone off on a tangent -- I'm not implying that Sal and/or Dean or the rest of the On the Road gang operate in this way. But we can't ignore the selfish elements of their world view -- or I can't today.

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I thought I was a beat, but I was just a boy, part 5 - centraljersey.com (blog)

The Association Of Independent Festivals (AIF) has announced the return of its flagship Festival Congress to Cardiff for its fourth year from October 31.

Selling out every year since its inception, this year'sconference at Wales Millennium Centre will be based around the theme ofPseudoscience to play homage to experiments made by scientists and festival promoters alike.

The two-day event, which accommodates 400 delegates, will be led by a keynote by artistic director and CEO of Manchester International Festival, John McGrath, in addition to quick fire talks from author Zoe Cormier about her book Sex, Drugs and Rock N Roll: The Science Of Hedonism And The Hedonism Of Science, and Creative Industries Federation CEO John Kampfner, who will speak about creative industry red lines on Brexit.

Were back for a fourth year with Festival Congress, the ultimate conference and festival party for the independents," said AIF co-founder Rob Da Bank (pictured). "Were proud of how essentia this event has become and all at AIF HQ are buzzing to be joining the dots between festival promotion and science this year, in what promises to be a packed and extremely fun couple of days in Cardiff.

Elsewhere, Dr Julia Jones of Found In Music will discuss her forthcoming book The Rock N Roll Guide To Staying Alive, exploring the lifelong effects of music on human behaviour and the positive effects that music has on well being.

There will also be a Question Time-style panel exploring political issues in relation to festivals and featuring some leading lights of the independent festival world, with other key topics at the conference including event security, welfar booking processes, up scaling small festivals and creative production. Another headline panel discussion will explore the next steps of AIFs Safer Spaces campaign, which reiterated the zero tolerance approach that festivals have to sexual assault with a 24-hour coordinated website black out in May.

Attendees include festival organisers from the likes of Glastonbury, Bestival, Boomtown Fair, Kendal Calling, Shambala, End of the Road and Liverpool Sound City.

The full conference programme will be announced in September. Tickets are on sale now; priced at 100 for AIF members, 135 to Friends of AIF and 200 general sale exclusively through headline event Gold sponsor The TicketSellers.

Read Music Week's exclusive interview with AIF general manager Paul Reed here.

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AIF reveals details of 2017 Festival Congress - Music Week