Arcade Fire are the latest headline act to be confirmed for Oxegen. As reported in the last issue of Hot Press, MCD are once again running a deposit scheme whereby you can pay €120 for your three-day camping ticket now, and the balance by June 19.
Playing the last time they were in Ireland to 20,000 people in the Phoenix Park, Win Butler’s mob are currently applying the finishing touches to the follow up to 2007’s Neon Bible album.
With Régine Chassagne of Haitian extraction, the band have been working overtime to highlight the country’s plight, and donated all the royalties from ‘Wake Up’ being used during the Superbowl to the standwithhaiti.org fund.
Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme also revealed this week how close himself and Arcade Fire were to getting caught up in the tragedy.
“We were going to do a music-driven documentary, against a backdrop of carnival in Jacmel – the great, now devastated, south coast Haitian city,” Demme says. “We had our final conference call the morning of the day the quake struck. We were gonna go down anyway until we realised we can't really get there.”
Another major addition to the bill is Fatboy Slim whose last visit to Ireland was for a Marlay Park sell-out. It’ll be interesting to see if he slips in any of the tunes from Here Lies Love, the Imelda Marcos concept album he’s made with David Byrne, and which after a couple of delays is due out in mid-April.