What’s the Point? Our guide to the hidden gems set to appear at Victoria Park music festival All Points East

From this year, and for at least the next five, All Points East will bring 40,000 people a day to Victoria Park for two long weekends of live music.

A more traditional multi-act festival will take place from 25-27 May, and following a mid-week programme of more community focused entertainment (yet to be announced), the shindig will conclude with all-day headline shows from Catfish and the Bottlemen, The National and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds across the weekend of 1-3 June.

For those of you who’ll miss the more left-field fare of Hackney festivals gone by, we’ve put together an informative guide to some of our favourites from the smorgasbord…

Art-pop: Yeah Yeah Yeahs made a return to the stage last year following a hiatus

Yeah Yeah Yeahs
All Points East festival: Friday 25 May

It’s hard to think of now, after the post-Strokes tide lifted fellow New Yorkers Yeah Yeah Yeahs to mainstream success, but at the turn of the millennium, the idea that a band of such raw performers – battling against the famously flat Later…with Jools Holland sound, their early performance of Fever To Tell’s ‘Pin’ is thrillingly alive – and who count the likes of Pussy Galore and masked grindcore enthusiasts The Locust among their inspirations, could be levelling massive festivals in 2018.

However Karen O, jazz drummer Brian Chase and guitarist Nick Zinner don’t shy away from pop’s emotion (see the heartbreaking ‘Maps’), nor its expanded instrumentation: third album It’s Blitz! piles synth upon synth, while most-recent collection Mosquito goes off in several different directions at once.

Flying Lotus in the midst of his stunning 3D show. Photograph: Youtube

Flying Lotus 3D
All Points East festival: Sunday 27 May

Genre-hopping producer Flying Lotus (real name Steven Ellison) has been working with fellow Los Angelenos 3D Live, a visual tech company whose portfolio stretches from collaborations with Pixar, and something called ‘Mixed Reality Golf’, to work with stars like deadmau5 and A$AP Rocky. (And Willie Nelson.)

The resulting show, with eye-popping images and beats being thrown together on the fly, does require viewers to pop on a pair of 3D glasses, which despite many other advances in the field, still ransack one’s sartorial dignity. But those who bear with it can feast on what, even without glasses, looks like one of the purest expressions of FlyLo’s dense, cosmic hip-hop.

The concept was put to the test in a tour late last year which started and ended in his native California, with Thundercat, Seven Davis Jr and Solange along for the ride at various points.

This Is The Kit’s Kate Stables (centre) and band

This Is The Kit
All Points East presents…The National: Saturday 2 June

The National top the bill on the second night of All Points East…presents. Despite this being billed as a headline show rather than a festival, there is still a diversity in the support slots – maybe not in genre, but certainly in mood.

While bands like Broken Social Scene and Warpaint will provide more strident sounds, Bristol’s This Is The Kit will join clear influence Cat Power in laying on a more personal, poetic performance.

From her breakthrough album Moonshine Freeze, ‘Bullet Proof’s high-fretted pluckings beg for a sunny day, and the title track almost reaches a soul groove in the mid-section. Most other tracks are more contemplative though – perfect for reflecting on your life while supping on a £6 beer, and perhaps having a nice, big cry.

Spoon. Photograph: Zackery Michael

Spoon
All Points East presents…The National: Saturday 2 June

The rockier edge to The National’s undercard. Austin, Texas’ Spoon have been toiling away since 1996’s Telephono – this album and follow up A Series of Sneaks trade expertly in nervy single-coil rock music, a style they’ve returned to from time to time since.

But the opportunities afforded by signing to Merge, and their tunes appearing in hit US TV shows like The O.C. and Veronica Mars, allowed them to start using the recording studio as an instrument.

Their key tracks since then sprinkle in production tricks and other musical treats – a personal favourite example is Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga’s ‘The Ghost of You Lingers’, with its hammering discordant piano overlaid with a whirlpool of decaying vocals. Funk, dub, disco and house inflections have also found their way into the Spoon sound, particularly on latest album Hot Thoughts.

Patti Smith at Field Day 2015 – she returns to Victoria Park for the last day of All Points East 2018. Photograph: Valerio Berdini

Patti Smith and her band
All Points East presents…Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Sunday 3 June

Patti Smith is one of a handful of acts who have graced the stage at Field Day, All Points East’s Victoria Park predecessor.

Back then in 2015, facing down the Sunday sunshine, she performed the classic Horses in its entirety and treated the crowd to biggest hit ‘Because The Night’ and a frenzied cover of The Who’s ‘My Generation’ in the encore.

Three years later, the trailblazing punk poet and her band return to Victoria Park in support of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. The two shared a bill for the first time ever at a massive Dublin show last year, and considering both have a penchant for playing with dark, theological imagery in their weighty compositions, they must have found a certain rapport.