Entering its seventh year, Field Day will be returning to the leafy green surroundings of Victoria Park with its unique formula of pioneering line-up coupled with village fete mentality, all in the heart of East London. Field Day will take place over the Bank Holiday weekend on Saturday 25th May.

Hosted by forward-thinking promoters Eat Your Own Ears, Bugged Out!, BleeD/ Lanzarote and proudly partnering with The i Paper, The Quietus, FACT Magazine, Last FM, Resident Advisor, The Line of Best Fit and Stool Pigeon, Field Day is a festival that has become synonymous with imaginative and progressive bills hosting the likes of Franz Ferdinand, SBTRKT, Afrocubism, Grimes and Django Django last summer; 2013 is certainly shaping up to be no exception to this rule.

Promoter Tom Baker of Eat Your Own Ears says: “It’s always a challenge trying to better the last Field Day line up.  But I think next year’s is as thrilling, inspiring and diverse as anything we’ve ever done. I am personally honoured that Field Day will play host to the brilliant main stage double bill of ground breaking artists Animal Collective and Bat For Lashes. And alongside these, Zimbabwe’s Thomas Mapfumo, seminal drummer Ginger Baker and Ethiopiques’ legend Mulatu Astatke are true dream bookings for Field Day.”

As with years gone by, Field Day will be providing ample entertainment for those looking for respite from the music in the Village Mentality area on The Village Green. Expect traditional side stalls inspired by country pastimes and weird and wonderful fete games, from classic tug of war, sack races and egg and spoon race to more unexpected and fantastic ones like tea bag tossing and the world famous winkle picking contest.

The excellent website Caught By The River, home to excellent writing by first class contributors on music, nature, ale and…fishing, has carved itself a unique place on the web since its beginnings in 2007 and will be hosting a fine area at Field Day 2013.

Among the first acts to be confirmed are Baltimore’s experimental psychedelic Animal Collective. Friends since childhood, they released their first album in 2000, and have since received consisted critical acclaim earning a reputation as one of the new millennium’s most influential, important and inventive musical acts. Eat Your Own Ears hosted their first ever UK show back in 2005 and 2013 will be the first time the collective take to the main Eat Your Own Ears stage at Field Day. ‘Centipede Hz’, the 10th Animal Collective album is the first since ‘Strawberry Jam’ (2007) to feature all four original band members: Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist and Deakin. The album is a panoramic set of songs that shimmer with the confidence and wonder of Animal Collective’s unique inner logic and the luminous warmth of their sound world…one we look forward to seeing at Field Day 2013.

Since releasing the universally acclaimed and a second Mercury nominated album ‘Two Suns’ in 2009, Bat For Lashes has toured with Radiohead and Coldplay, collaborated with Beck to write a song for the ‘Twilight’ film, earned two Brit Award nominations and won an Ivor Novello songwriting award. Bat For Lashes returns stronger than ever with her most anticipated album yet, ‘The Haunted Man’. Featuring tracks ‘Laura’ and ‘All Your Gold’, the album is striking and enigmatic as well as stripped down of any excessive ornamentation. This is the most raw incarnation of Bat For Lashes yet. It’s a safe bet that her haunting performance will be one of the day’s most magical and most beautiful.

After a hugely successful year, 2012 Mercury Prize nominees Django Django will return to Field Day bringing their avant-pop combination of sci-fi synths, African tribal beats and hypnotic harmonies, creating mesmerising music that will make the whole field dance.

Celebrating their first entry into the UK top 40 with their single ‘Cough Cough’, Everything Everything play a set of new music from their highly anticipated second album ‘Arc’, released in January 2013, alongside classics from their 2011 Mercury nominated album ‘Man Alive’.

World music has always played a significant part in Field Day’s line ups and 2013 certainly looks to continue that trend with performances from Thomas Mapfumo. Having produced revolutionary and politically charged music for over three decades, Mapfumo, also known as ‘The Lion of Zimbabwe’, is considered a security threat by the oppressive government of his homeland but a national symbol for Zimbabweans. As the creator of Chimurenga (‘music of struggle’) and releasing nearly a record a year, Mapfumo’s reign as a folk hero keeps growing in and beyond his homeland: his album ‘Rise Up’ received an 8.0 from Pitchfork and he has been sampled by the fellow Field Day artist Dan Snaith aka Caribou for his project Daphni.

Mapfumo will be joined by the legendary Mulatu Astatke (Ethiopiques) who in many ways is considered the most crucial figure in Ethiopia’s musical history since the 1960s. Drawing plaudits from the likes of Elvis Costello, Robert Plant and Jim Jarmusch (who featured songs of Ethiopiques in his film ‘Broken Flowers’) and having played with Duke Ellington and hung out with John Coltrane, it is his radical approach to traditional Ethiopian melodies and songs and the creation of a new sound of modern Ethiopian pop – a taut funk, soul and jazz hybrid – that has seen him crowned as the ‘Father of Ethio-jazz’.

Legendary rock drummer Ginger Baker, renowned for his work with seminal bands Cream and Blind Faith, will deliver a mind bending set of progressive jazz originals and African rhythms. Both his friendship with Afrobeat creator Fela Kuti, as well as his work with other African musicians since his trip to Africa in 1971, paved the way for his later projects. As the world’s best drummer he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1992) and his awards include a Grammy Life Time Achievement Award (2005).

Four Tet will return after a hugely successful year of supporting Radiohead, remixing the XX, DJing around the world and releasing his latest excellent album ‘Pink’. Expect the field to be transformed into clubbers’ paradise by his eclectic, thoughtful and most certainly unique music, a proven recipe for long-lasting respect and success.

Currently collaborating with Kanye West, we are excited to welcome Hudson Mohawke back to Field Day after his impressive performance last summer to a packed and buzzing Bugged Out! Tent, joined by Canadian producer Lunice as the eclectic duo TNGHT. Known for their proven and tested skills in working a party to its peak and keeping it there, the duo will create a truly palpable sense of excitement with their exhilarating audio visual show. Expect an unforgettable blast of pure sonic adrenaline!

Delving into more dance driven pursuits, we will be welcoming the garage-house duo Disclosure. With their debut album yet to be released in 2013 but already having entered the UK Singles Charts with ‘Latch’ and toured with SBTRKT and Hot Chip earlier this year, the two young brothers from Surrey are here to create dance-floor filling hypnotizing melodies alongside heavy bass lines.

Few side projects of 2012 have generated as much anticipation and expectation as Daphni, the feminine, club friendly alias of Caribou’s Dan Snaith. ‘Jialong’ is the Canadian’s debut album under this particular moniker, driven by the energy and dark corners of the dancefloor and already considered as one of the best records of 2012, both in the dance community and beyond. Expect to be taken, in Daphni’s own words, to “a small world where dance music lives up to its potential to liberate, surprise and innovate.”

Also representing the festival’s dance music contingent will be fellow experimental underground artist Julio Bashmore, who we welcome back after last year’s amazing set, and young Montreal producer Jacques Greene, who will be taking to the decks with his shiny and modern combination of house and 2step. Under the guise of Karenn, the perfectly matched duo formed by R&S labelmates Pariah and Blawan will perform a mesmerising set fusing deep, bass-heavy sounds darting between techno and house. Meanwhile, the genre-crossing label Hessle Audio, a pioneering force in UK music, will be represented by its founding members Ben UFO, Pangaea and Pearson Sound, who will bring their mesmerizing and unique combination of UK Funky, Garage and deep house – a simple result of “three heads being better than one.”

From this year’s most highly anticipated band to the next, the beat abstractionist and experimental R&B artist Tom Krell aka How To Dress Well will bring his sleek, alabaster sound of his latest album ‘Total Loss’ that earned him ‘Best New Music’ acclaim on Pitchfork.

With their debut album still to be released but support growing stronger and stronger, London band Daughter will showcase their collection of dark, ethereal and beautiful songs, weaving the intimacy and honesty of timeless songwriting.

French four piece Francois and the Atlas Mountains have performed around the globe with the likes of Camera Obscura, Electrelane, Anna Calvi and King Creosote & Jon Hopkins.  They match French lyrics to African rhythms and their distinctive songwriting is whimsically surreal with a joyous side of sheer, un-repressed fun. Latest release ‘E Volo Love’ is a beautiful collection of Gallic chamber-pop and chanson with rich piano chords, shimmering electric guitars and an all-female polyphonic vocal group creating a truly colourful sound.

Celebrating the 15th anniversary since the release of their first album in 1997, the Canadian Do Make Say Think will bring their highly original hybrids of psych, jazz, punk and electronica to Field Day, surpassing the all-too-familiar confines of generic post-rock.

Also from Toronto are the Polaris Music Prize Winners Fucked Up, known for pushing musical and conceptual boundaries from the very beginning in 2001, when they formed ostensibly as a punk band and then swiftly took on hardcore, twisting it into their own version, with a psychedelic edge, unexpected instrumentation and songs stretched to perverse lengths.

Also on board is ex-Charlatan extraordinaire Tim Burgess, who has been extremely busy completing his autobiography ‘Telling Stories’, successfully launching the bold ‘O Genesis label’, living between Manchester, Los Angeles, London and Nashville, where he met Field Day favourite R Stevie Moore, and releasing his first solo album in nine years ‘Oh No I Love You’ – a sum of his life and musical loves.

James Yorkston, Scottish musician and integral member of the Fence Collective (King Creosote, Pictish Tail) will be bringing stirring folk and beautiful melodies, while Cleveland electronic trio Emeralds will bring their heart-wrenching sounds, setting loops against loops, with super-fast pinwheeling oscillations buzzing out of control and gathering incredible force as layers accrue…

Also on the bill are Glasgow electro-pop wonder Chvrches who are already causing a massive stir online, with their Gary Numan-style synths, slick sound collage and touching lyrics.

Regularly topping ‘Ones To Watch’ lists are ex Lovvers Virals with their soaring melodies and spangly guitars, and Londoners Charlie Boyer & The Voyeurs. Perfectly channelling mid 70s NYC art punk, Charlie takes the sounds of one blank generation and blasts them out to another, neatly presented in their just released debut single ‘I Watch You’ produced by Orange Juice legend Edwyn Collins.

Meanwhile, London trio Vondelpark will bring their deliciously dolorous sounds, with a dreaminess that makes their music seem like slick R&B put through an Ariel Pink filter, like Portishead with a pop appeal, like Sade remixed by the xx…expect the most sweetly twisted soul.

For more information go to:

www.fielddayfestivals.com

Tickets:

Early Bird tickets (on sale for a very limited time) – £45

TICKETWEB – 08444 77 1000

http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/artist/field-day-london-tickets/911919

SEETICKETS – 0871 220 0260

http://www.seetickets.com/Tour/FIELD-DAY

http://www.eventim.co.uk/field-day

Jagwar Ma at Field Day has been cancelled due to unforseen circumstances.