Supersonic Festival
Birmingham
Most summer festivals take place in muddy fields. The difference with Birmingham's Supersonic is that it takes place indoors, and in the very leftfield. A kind of smaller-scale version of the All Tomorrow's Parties events, Supersonic offers music that has been pushed underground into its own niche by more mainstream events. And a good job too, you may well think, as Japanese noise act Merzbow get into their stride. But alongside the more challenging turns on display - of which there are many, including Oxbow, Fuck Buttons and Gravetemple, featuring Julian Cope - there are also some genuinely inspiring sights available. Chief among these would have to be Battles (pictured), the glam-rock math rockers, fronted by Tyondai Braxton, but there's also the exclusive presence of Harmonia, protagonists of beatless, trancey krautrock, theirs is an engrossing journey to inner space.
The Custard Factory, Fri 11 to Jul 13
T In The Park
Kinross
Sometimes a festival is a place for adventure. Scotland's T In The Park festival is one that chooses to keep that adventure, musically speaking at least, to a minimum. In a year of some interesting festival lineup decisions, T has kept things steady, keeping an emphasis on big rock bands: headliners are the Verve, REM and, maybe most interestingly, Rage Against The Machine. Seen by some as godfathers of the nu-metal scene which ran riot at the tail end of the 1990s - a charge the band themselves hotly deny - their high-tech blend of hard rock and politically motivated shouting is a bracing addition to the bill. Elsewhere, there's reliable stuff from Kaiser Chiefs, Stereophonics, Kings Of Leon and Amy Winehouse.
· Balado Airfield, Fri 11 to Jul 13
The Hop Farm
Tonbridge
Boasting "no branding, no sponsors", The Hop Farm festival is an event very much for those who might otherwise find themselves saying that festivals "aren't what they used to be". Here, in fact, things are very much as they used to be: Hop Farm's lineup asks you less to attend a modern rock festival, more to don a suede jacket of the mind. And not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that - a one-day event, Hop Farm will be offering some of the very best in genres which have stayed essentially unchanged since the 1970s. From hard, sometimes countrified rockers (Primal Scream, My Morning Jacket), to singer-songwriters (Rufus Wainwright) and enduring perennials who remember exactly how things used to be (Neil Young, pictured, who headlines), this is a no bells, no whistles kind of show. That doesn't mean it'll be low on surprises though: Neil Young's Chrome Dreams II set really does have to be seen to be believed.
· The Hop Farm Country Park, Sun 6
