Long Division’s musical mixture- festival is this weekend

More than 70 bands will be taking part in the festival which is spread across nine city centre venues.

Sea Power (formerly British Sea Power) are the main headline act.

Other bands include indie rockers Field Music, guitar pop stars The Howl & The Hum and Scottish star The Pictish Trail as well as LIFE, W.H. Lung, LYR and The Clockworks.

Post-punk trio Deep Tan are bringing their exhilarating live show to Wakefield along with a return for Low Hummer,

Also confirmed are the much-hyped experimental London rock band Modern Woman, the beautiful alt-folk of Scotland’s Rachel Sermanni, fast-rising local indie-pop talent Bored At My Grandmas House, and the in-demand doom-pop of Denmark-born Rebecca Lou performing material from last year’s standout album ‘Heavy Metal Feelings’.

Poet laureate Simon Armitage is opening the festival.

Tomorrow night he will be in conversation with Chris Madden of Chinwag for an evening of poetry and discussion at Wakefield Town Hall.

And he will be sticking around for Saturday’s gig with his band LYR, which stands for Land Yacht Regatta.

He said: “Working with LYR has really woken up something that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.

“I love writing song lyrics and working with musicians, but I didn’t think we imagined we’d be playing so many shows when we formed.”

Long Division is now under the guidance of a new team of young organisers.

Founder and director, Dean Freeman said: “We’re hugely excited about 2022.

“We’ve got a brand new staff team, all under 25 and full of energy and ideas.”

Meanwhile, there are calls for more locals to get involved.

Eva Davies, the festival’s new live events assistant, said: “It can be hard to get people to come to gigs in Wakefield, but we want to start building up a strong scene.

“Long Division has a strong loyal fanbase from Wakefield, but we do tend to get a lot of people coming from Sheffield and Leeds.

“We really want people to come who have never been before.

“We tend to get a good mix of headliners and local bands that have been around for a while, and young people who are just starting out.”

Tickets: Go to https://longdivisionfestival.co.uk/

Doom-pop: Rebecca Lou from Denmark. Credit Tue Blichfeldt