A Little More Latitude

Mean Fiddler Music Group’s Latitude Festival is expanding from three days to four and has already announced a lineup that will enhance its reputation for putting on some of the best emerging talent.

Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are confirmed among the bill-toppers for the 2-year-old multi-genre event, which MFMG’s Tania Harrison described as being "as near as a festival gets to the Edinburgh Fringe."

The lake and woodland park site close to the Suffolk coast at Henham Hall has a dozen entertainment areas that cater for live music and pretty much all genres of the arts and entertainment.

Mean Fiddler’s Melvin Benn, who runs the company’s Reading–Leeds Carling Weekend and oversees the license application for Glastonbury, said he wanted a festival that was a departure from the norm and would offer theatre, cabaret, film, literature, poetry and art. And maybe even political debate.

"I’m very keen to see [Conservative politician] Boris Johnson here debating with somebody from my side of the fence," Benn, a self-proclaimed socialist, told BBC News before last year’s Latitude debut.

Apart from Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, arguably the two relatively new acts that have drawn most praise from the U.K. media over the last year, Live Nation’s Jon Dunn, who books the contemporary music stages, has also confirmed Wilco, The Good, The Bad & The Queen, Damien Rice, CSS, The Magic Numbers, The Rapture, and Gotan Project.

This year’s Latitude takes place July 12-15.