Lazuli, Magenta and Moonparticle announced for Summer's End 2018

Lazuli, Magenta and Moonparticle – the new project from former Lifesigns guitarist Niko Tsonev – are among the bands confirmed to play at this year’s Summer’s End. The event returns to the Drill Hall in Chepstow on October 5-7.

“We expect the tickets will sell out very quickly – last year, we’d sold out by the end of March – so snap them up!” says Stephen Lambe, who co-promotes the festival with Midnight Sun vocalist Huw Lloyd-Jones. “We’re trying out a standalone pre-show gig at Winter’s End [in April], and we’ll have one at Summer’s End on Thursday October 4 as well. We’ll announce the line-up closer to the date.”

This year’s Summer’s End line-up is completed by Tim Bowness, Landmarq, Kaprekar’s Constant, Toxic Smile, Frequency Drift, Edensong, September Code, Golden Caves, and When Mary, who are signed to Summer’s End sister label Sonicbond.

“From a personal point of view, obviously I’m looking forward to When Mary,” says Lambe. “I’m also really looking forward to seeing Golden Caves from Holland – I thought their album Collision was is just fantastic. It’ll also be Landmarq’s first gig for some years, one of Moonparticle’s first shows and Toxic Smile’s first gig in the UK since 2011 – they feature Marek Arnold (UPF, Damanek, Seven Steps To The Green Door) who’s played the last few Summer’s End in various bands. It’s a very international line-up.”

The early bird Leap Of Faith tickets went on sale last year, and weekend tickets are available from January 25, from the Summer’s End website.

Contributing to Prog since the very first issue, writer and broadcaster Natasha Scharf was the magazine’s News Editor before she took up her current role of Deputy Editor, and has interviewed some of the best-known acts in the progressive music world from ELP, Yes and Marillion to Nightwish, Dream Theater and TesseracT. Starting young, she set up her first music fanzine in the late 80s and became a regular contributor to local newspapers and magazines over the next decade. The 00s would see her running the dark music magazine, Meltdown, as well as contributing to Metal Hammer, Classic Rock, Terrorizer and Artrocker. Author of music subculture books The Art Of Gothic and Worldwide Gothic, she’s since written album sleeve notes for Cherry Red, and also co-wrote Tarja Turunen’s memoirs, Singing In My Blood. Beyond the written word, Natasha has spent several decades as a club DJ, spinning tunes at aftershow parties for Metallica, Motörhead and Nine Inch Nails. She’s currently the only member of the Prog team to have appeared on the magazine’s cover.

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