“It’s going to be amazing…”

End Of The Road supremo Simon Taffe picks six of the best acts to look out for at this year’s festival…

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Sahra Halgan

Her backstory is nuts. She’s a Somalian cultural activist who started singing at 13. During the Somalian civil war, she was a nurse on the frontline and only released her first album in her late-thirties after becoming a refugee in France. To explain the music, it’s African psych-rock with a strong female lead vocal. It’s a bit like Mdou Moctar mixed with King Gizzard – it’s got a real groove, but having a female lead singer really changes the feel. The album she just released, Hiddo Dhawr, is so good.

Joanna Sternberg

I think they’re incredible. They write songs in the same way as someone like Daniel Johnston, straight from the heart, but they’re also classically trained. I saw them supporting Jessica Pratt, and while I do love Jessica Pratt, I did prefer Joanna Sternberg live. I guess I liked the dynamic and the craziness of it all. I think they’re a songwriter in the vein of Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman – they could write for anyone if they wanted to. Quite a few of my friends found their voice a bit Marmite at first, but they’ve got a really strong pop songwriting sensibility.

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Ichiko Aoba

She’s a Japanese singer-songwriter who’s also a brilliant guitar-player in the same way as John Fahey and stuff like that. She also plays clarinet, piano, accordion, flute… There’s kind of a Ryuicihi Sakamoto vibe to it – in fact she’s collaborated with him in the past. The music’s beautiful and ethereal but when you see her live, the way she plays and sings is quite jaw-dropping. It’s going to be amazing on the Garden Stage.

Water From Your Eyes

I wasn’t so sure until I saw them live, but they’re everything you want from a Brooklyn band: offbeat post-punk, distorted synth-pop, shoegaze textures… It’s very cool but they’re unique, and they’ve got the songs. They cite their influences as Ween and Scott Walker, but it’s actually moving into the LCD [Soundsystem] dance-punk world, it’s really fun.

ML Buch

She’s a Danish guitarist who makes psychedelic, experimental indie-pop. There are elements of Beach House in there, or you could compare her to Mabe Fratti. Guitar is definitely her main instrument, but she’s also a composer and producer who uses loads of different sounds. I read an interview where she said that, for three years, she just went out and recorded the wind! But it’s actually proper structured songs, not some weird arthouse thing. It’s abstract, but not as abstract as you think.

Senyawa

We’ve actually got two Indonesian bands playing this year. Nusantara Beat are more of a party band, but Senyawa are dark, experimental metal. I saw them on Youtube and thought, ‘That looks so scary, it’s like something out of a horror film – I have to book them, it’s gonna freak people out!’ But I do think their music’s really cool as well.

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