All Points East 2018
Festival guide
Brand new for 2018, All Points East is run by the team behind Coachella, takes place on two consecutive weekends this May/June in East London’s Victoria Park, and boasts some of the best line-ups this festival season. Big draws on the first weekend include LCD Soundsystem, The xx and Bjork, while the second weekend promises a series of “All Points East Presents” shows, headlined and curated by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, The National and Catfish and the Bottlemen. Dig into those incredible bills below.
Top picks
Yaeji
Brooklyn producer Kathy Yaeji Lee was catapulted from relative obscurity in 2017 with her superb second EP. Created with GODMODE’s Nick Sylvester the aptly-titled ep2 serves up hypnotic, dancefloor jams (‘Drink I’m Sippin On’ and the incredible ‘Raingurl’) and dreamy, after-hours cuts (‘Feelings Change’) – plus a gorgeous take on Drake’s More Life hit ‘Passionfruit’ – with Lee frequently switching her vocal-style from singing to rapping, and from English to Korean. All Points East is the only UK festival date Lee has scheduled, and you’d be mad to miss her.
Yaeji plays All Points East on Sunday, 27th May.
Lykke Li
From the predatory pop on Wounded Rhymes to the bruised power ballads scattered throughout I Never Learn, Lykke Li has been successfully pioneering a musical strand of Nordic noir for the best part of a decade now. Displaying brilliant self-awareness, the Swedish songwriter’s forthcoming fourth album is to be titled, So Sad, So Sexy, and lead singles ‘Deep End’ and ‘Hard Rain’ hint at some radical musical surprises within, the former offering a dreamy take on trap and the latter being a Frank Ocean-inspired AutoTuned bounce. She'll doubtless be debuting more songs at All Points East.
Lykke Li plays All Points East on Saturday, 26th May.
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
After more than a year on the road, Nick Cave is finally bringing the brutal beauty of his latest LP to the festival circuit. It might seem strange to imagine the raw, deeply-painful songs of Skeleton Tree blowing around Victoria Park, but if last year’s sell-out tour of the world’s arenas proved anything, it’s that Cave is more than capable of recreating the intense intimacy of club shows in front of crowds numbering thousands. Expect a generous helping of back catalogue classics too, from ‘Stagger Lee’ and ‘Red Right Hand’ to ‘From Her To Eternity’.
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds play All Points East on Sunday, 3rd June.
Big names
Don't miss
More from the line-up
- We’re trying to provoke people. A strong reaction is the ideal reaction, whether that’s positive or negative.
- We literally signed our record deal on the rubber dinghy rapids.
- It became normalised to feel like you were in some weird disaster movie.
- It's time to stop avoiding mentioning politics in the name of politeness, or in the name of avoiding offending people.
- We were so f***ing sick of the songs from the first record that it started to hurt to play shows.
- When you’re trying to concentrate and all you can hear is Buddhist chanting above you, it’s pretty consuming.
- Playing the songs live is a bit like hanging your dirty laundry out for everyone to see.
- I was scared; I didn’t want people to be able to see into my soul.
- We don’t write b-sides; it’s all solid gold. It’s like, why write a song if it’s no good?