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Denmark's summer festival race heats up

The Local Denmark
The Local Denmark - [email protected]
Denmark's summer festival race heats up
Mastodon was one of 24 new acts added to the 2015 Roskilde Festival line-up. Photo: Roadrunner Records

A total of 30 new musical acts were rolled out in duelling announcements from Roskilde Festival and Tinderbox on Thursday, with the NorthSide Festival making additions of its own earlier this week.

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As the final days of winter wind down, the competition on the summer music festival circuit is heating up. 
 
In a span of just two hours on Thursday, Tinderbox and Roskilde Festival announced a combined 30 new acts for their respective summer festivals.
 
The upstart Tinderbox got things rolling with the 10am addition of James Blake, Major Lazer, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Go Go Berlin, Emeli Sande and Sheppard. 
 
Those additions follow on to the Odense-based festival’s announcements of acts including The Prodigy, Faith No More and Modest Mouse in recent weeks. The festival's initial line-up announcement included the likes of Robbie Williams, Calvin Harris and The Cardigans.
 
First introduced in September, Tinderbox will be holding its inaugural festival June 26-28 in Odense’s Tusindårsskoven, wrapping up just two days before the main musical portion of the 44th annual Roskilde Festival gets underway. 
 
Two hours after Tinderbox's new additions, Roskilde on Thursday announced a full 24 new acts highlighted by American prog-metal giants Mastodon, former Oasis frontman Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and Swedish sister act First Aid Kit. Both Mastodon and First Aid Kits are repeat guests, the former having played in 2011, 2007 and 2005 and the latter appearing in 2012. 
 
Roskilde’s Thursday announcement had a distinctly Scandinavian flavor, with eight Danish acts – highlighted by the reunited dancehall sensation Bikstok – two acts from Sweden and three from Norway, including the DJ sensation Kygo. 
 
Roskilde has previously said that Pharrell Williams, Lamb of God, Disclosure, Muse and The War on Drugs, to name just a few. 
 
Not to be left out from the festival picture is NorthSide. Although the Aarhus festival wasn’t part of Thursday’s explosion of new acts, it did add English singer-songwriter Ben Howard and American rapper Earl Sweatshirt, among others, on Tuesday and has already announced big names including the Black Keys, Wu-Tang Clan, Little Dragon and the Jesus and Mary Chain. 
 
NorthSide will hold its sixth annual festival June 12-14. 
 
With more than three months to go – and dozens of acts still to be revealed – it’s looking like the clear winner in the three-way festival race will be music fans in Denmark and its surrounding countries. 

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