The author of The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons and Digital Fortress has variously been described as saving the publishing industry, destroying the Catholic Church, fuelling a boom in tourism to Paris and Rome, and being part of a shadowy cabal of terrible writers bent on destroying our reading standards.

Dan Brown being Plotty McPlotterson

Either way, it’s a heavyweight name on the festival, so cardinals’ hats off to the organisers. The festival takes place from May 20th to 26th, with further details yet to be released.

Elsewhere in the publishing world, The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize has released it’s longlist for 2013 (the prize is given out in May.) The list is:

A Death In the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard
The Detour by Gerbrand Bakker
HHhH by Laurence Binet
The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
The Last of the Vostyachs by Diego Marani
Cold Sea Stories by Pawel Huelle
The Fall of the Stone City by Ismail Kadare
Black Bazaar by Alain Mabanckou
Bundu by Chris Barnard
Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas
In Praise of Hatred by Khalid Khalifa
The Murder of Halland by Pia Juul
Satantango by Laszlo Krasznahorkai
Silent House by Orhan Pamuk
Traveller of the Century by Andrés Neuman
Trieste by Daša Drndić

I’ve only read a handful, but I would imagine the early favourites to be Laurent Binet’s HHhH, In Praise of Hatred by Khalid Khalifa (which is banned in the author’s native Syria), and it’s hard to argue against anything by Ismail Kadare or Orhan Pamuk (who won the inaugural prize in 1990).

Here’s my review from last year of Binet’s HHhH, and if it’s foreign fiction you’re into, Dalkey Archive Press’s Best European Fiction 2013 is well worth a punt. It’s a glittering array of talent (with admittedly a few duff notes), packed with strange turns in unfamiliar countries. Here’s my review from the Irish Times’ Arts & Books section at the weekend.

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Also on Saturday, Arvo Pärt and Louis Andriessen will be attempting to usurp governments, when the RTE Concert Orchestra performs Pärt’s Symphony No 4 – a direct criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin – and Andriessen’s De Staat – a piece from 1976 that has developed a cult following.

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The Hilliard Ensemble blew my tiny mind with their 2011 concert in St Patrick’s Cathedral with Jan Garbarek, and now they are back, playing a double header with Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson.

On Sunday evening, Crash Ensemble will be delivering its Europa survey of cutting-edge European music. The programme features works by Simon Steen Andersen (which uses text from Nelson Mandela’s prison diaries), Georg Fredrich Haas (in this piece, the audience sits within the players), Heiner Goebbels (this work is a reconstructed ballet), and Michel Van Der Aa. The latter’s piece is called Here. Anyone heard heckling with an “Aa here, leave it out” will probably get thrown out – but it will be well worth it.

Pop goes the cello: If that’s not adventurous enough for you how about some Swedish fantasy cello pop? Linnea Olsson is happy to oblige in the Workman’s Club on Saturday night.

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Theatre of note: The premise of Noteworthy, which runs at TheatreUpstairs at Lanigan’s Bar in Dublin until Saturday, is intriguing. A woman burn’s her deceased brother’s suicide note, some time after it has been read and fixated upon by her family. The oddness creeps in, though, when it becomes apparent that the note is a fake. (In a further unsettling piece of theatricality, the dead brother is on-stage throughout, played by Barry O’Connor.)

Róisín Coyle’s short play, directed by Janet Moran, is pitched as a dark comedy, and props to the team for tackling an issue that should be right at the top of the agenda in Ireland, cultural or otherwise. Click here for more information, and here for Peter Crawley’s review.

All the lads: You can always rely on your friends for a helping hand, and guitarist Henry McCullough has more friends than most. A benefit concert for McCullough, who suffered permanent damage after a heart attack in November, takes place in Vicar Street on Sunday, and more than a few of the great and good are showing up to show their support.

McCullough began his career with The Skyrockets and Gene and The Gents (they don’t make band names like they etc and so on), before touring with the likes of The Animals, Pink Floyd and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. He joined Sweeney’s Men and Joe Cocker’s Grease Band, meaning he was on-stage during that show at Woodstock in 1969.

McCullough was also in Wings, which just goes to show that nobody’s perfect, but quit in 1973 and then played in numerous solo and group projects.

Among those on the roster on Sunday are Sweeney’s Men, The Fleadh Cowboys, Christy Moore, Declan Synnott, Mick Flannery, John Spillane, Honor Heffernan, Johnny Duhan, The Ed Deane Band, Jimmy Smith and more. Click here for the necessaries.

It’s a welcome relief, then, that Jarrett hasn’t read the script, and he breezes onstage in flying form. Between tracks, he bows frequently, full of banter and anecdotes; when a phone inevitably goes off, he laughs about it; he even solicits requests (sort of). Are we sure we have our man?

Well, yes. Given the sounds coming out of the grand piano, there could only be one particular person on stage. He begins in complex, classical mode, improvising through a dense, articulate piece that promises to bring his concert into really challenging areas; this is a one-off, though, and he never quite returns to this type of playing.

From here on in, Jarrett relies more on his gorgeous colour and tone, adding depth and impressive emotion to his crafted improvs, making every note count. He wraps silvery lines up the board, brings a sense of drama to his music-making that few people can match, injects bits of funk here and there, and even takes the blues out for the odd walk.

Jarrett frequently gets off his stool, humming and muttering his musical lines in a style that has become all his own, as he digs deeper for his next approach. This is a tightly tempered gig, though, and it never feels as if he is truly pushing himself. This is the sound of a formidable maestro in smooth, flowing action, not the raw pulse of a player being pushed to his limits. Jarrett roams his idyllic musical countryside, and the audience seems largely delighted with the views, but it’s a little predictable and the expected fireworks never materialise.

There is probably no one like Jarrett for knowing how to give songs such a sense of completion in their closing bars, and his encores here are suitably stylish. My Wild Irish Rose sets up a bluesy improv before he bows out – inevitably, satisfyingly and rather beautifully – with Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

There’s Ethan Jones, usually to be found working with the likes of Ryan Adam, Ray La Montagne and Laura Marling, now going solo and rolling into the Sugar Club in Dublin tonight. There’s Mark Eitzel, former frontman of American Music Club, currently touring deft cracker of an album Don’t Be a Stranger to Cork, Kilkenny and Galway. And Derry dudes Fighting with Wire are in Dublin tonight for what is reputedly their last gig.

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Last night, Keith Jarrett was delivering his first show here in 30 years (I’ll have a review in the paper on Monday), and for those of you still with a hunger for jazz after last weekend’s 12 Points extravaganza, Get the Blessing are happy to oblige. They are currently making their way around the country, bringing their jazz-funk-rock live show to far-flung places. Their tour opener in Whelan’s on Tuesday night was a cracker, and here’s an interview I did with Clive Deamer earlier in the week if you need further convincing.

A Dead cert: A few weeks ago, we were singing the praises of short film Irish Folk Furniture, and tonight there is the perfect chance to see it as part of Young Hearts Run Free’s latest glittering event. Also performing on the night will be Andy Irvine, who headlines, along with The Dudley Corporation, The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock, Lisa O’Neill and Barry McCormack, and it all takes place in the house of The Dead, or James Joyce House at 15 Usher’s Island as it’s more accurately known. Doors open at 7.30pm and tickets are ¤20, with all proceeds going to the Simon Community. Outstanding.

Dance-off: Coiscéim’s latest show Pageant is taking over the Project Arts Centre from tomorrow (or if you’re super-keen you can head along to previews tonight) for a run of shows, before a national tour. Pageant sees choreographers David Bolger and Muirne Bloomer devise a show that moves from mayhem to military precision, with a soundtrack featuring Bowie, Boland and Ravel. Click here for more.

Swiftly to film, by way of Corden: The other night I tried to watch the Brits, but what’s the point in having an extended dull headache featuring flashing lights and fronted by James Corden ruining you evening (honestly what is the point of Corden? To induce a nationwide feeling of discomfort as he delivers one ill-timed, car crash of a non-joke after another, and the poor interviewee is caught there like a lamb queuing up among the horses to slaughter?)

So instead, I tuned into the Culture Show’s Mark Kermode giving out his annual awards in a show that probably had the same budget as one of Taylor Swift’s haircuts – and it was brilliant. (The show, not Swift’s bangs – I know nothing about hair as anyone who can see me at this moment will attest. Hell, I even had to look up what bangs are, and I’m not entirely sure Swift even has some. She did look well though. Very healthy. Is it the wheatgrass? I’ll bet she’s on the wheatgrass.)

Kermode, ever the voice of intelligent reason, convinced me of one thing – I seem to have seen precisely two films last year: Avengers Assemble and Once upon a Time in Anatolia, both of which are jaw-droppingly brilliant achievements, though for very different reasons.

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All of which tortured introduction brings us to the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, which despite having one of the most infuriating websites in all of Christendom still manages to sell out nearly all of its events and plenty of its screenings. Among this weekend’s shows that still have availability are Short Stories (this evening at Savoy); Beware of Mr Baker (Saturday at Cineworld) and Post Tenebras Lux (on Sunday at the Light House). Do yourself a favour, spend a large amount of time in a darkened room surrounded by strangers avoiding eye contact, and feel culturally smug for the rest of the year.

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This is a set of sparse, austere music shot through with classical influences. Italian jazz has a tendency for the romantic, and so it is with EZT – their songs are lyrical and refined, built around the melodic lines of Zanisi on the piano, with smooth, tailored drumwork by Alessandro Paternesi, and Joseph Rehmer giving everything a soft landing on the double bass.

The band show terrific control and restraint but for all the slickness of the approach, EZT need more blood and bite, more fire in the belly. Austere, evocative and cinematic they may be, but the set rarely moves itself beyond a gentle jog or takes a wander down an unfamiliar path. This set needs a jolt of dynamic to really snap it to life.

The 12 Points festival is curated in such a way as to give the listener a variety of musical tastes on each night – but few shocks to the heart could have been more violent than what came after the bucolic EZT.

Cactus Truck play a kind of music that appeals to a narrow field of jazz fans. The trio of John Dikeman on saxophone, Onno Govaert on drums and Jasper Stadhouders on bass arrive on stage with a cacophonous wall of noise, with shape and form barely discernible beneath the sound and the fury. From there it descends to a sleazy groove on just sax and drums before Stadhouers swaps his bass for guitar and whips the chaos up to a frenzy all over again.

This is volatile, explosive music that exists on the limits of most people’s perception of music and many (myself included) find if difficult to compete with. There is no doubting the seriousness with which they set about their music, nor that there is a complex and deliberate structure put in place. The energy is off the scale on stage; this is a free wave, no wave ambush that you’ll either love or hate.

If it was groove and melody in a slickly marshaled package you were looking for, it arrived in the form of festival closers Beats and Pieces.

The Manchester crew brought their big band brassy ensemble to Dublin and a set that mixed a healthy respect for tradition with some welcome youthful aggression. Led by Ben Cottrell, the band perform mostly original material and here mixed a rock approach with a relatively straightahead take on the brass arrangements; the outcome is a rather cinematic musical nous that has more than a touch of Lalo Schifrin about it. The set has groove and soul aplenty, shot through with some excellent solos, particularly from Sam Healey on saxophone and Finlay Panter on drums, but there is a sense that, for a band this young, they could take a few more musical risks. If you’re going to deploy the heavy artillery of a big brass band you have to blow an audience away and leave no dissenters, and here that’s not always the case.

The set, though, is made up of intricately crafted tunes, running from the upbeat room shaking groove of Jazzwalk and the more reflective Yafw to the measured melancholy of Broken. There are enough of moments of beauty, colour and full-throated tone here to close this festival of glittering diversity in fine style.

Pageant, the latest show from CoisCéim Dance Theatre, premieres this Saturday, February 23rd, at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin, before embarking on a five-stop Irish tour between then and March 19th.

The show is the latest from David Bolger and Muirne Bloomer, who have just returned from New York, where they were showcasing the moving Swimming With My Mother.

Pageant focuses on the extraordinary aspect of the everyday, from the workplace, to the street and the home. The producers say that the show, set around a fictional ceremony, celebrates the performer in us all: “Have you ever made a spectacle of yourself? Can or have you walked the tightrope of life, jumping through hoops while bending over backwards to please others? There is pageantry in everything we do and CoisCéim Dance Theatre’s latest production demonstrates this to ‘a tee’ while staging the most fun display of theatre, dance, psychology and so much more that you’ll see on stage all year.”

It may have been beautiful to look at, but the dancers’ comprehension of the rules of cricket were loose at best

The show has been choreographed by David Bolger and Muirne Bloomer, and the cast features the duo, along with Jen Fleenor, Robert Jackson, Mónica Muñoz Marín, Jonathan Mitchell and Emma O’Kane. The score for Pageant includes music by David Bowie, T Rex and Ravel.

After the Project performances, the show tours to the Limetree in Limerick, the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire, the Civic Theatre in Tallaght, Draíocht in Blanchardstown, and the Town Hall Theatre in Galway. Click here for details and booking information.

Coiscéim will also be hosting a series of dance workshops at each venue for all ages. Click here for details.

To mark the occassion, we have two pairs of tickets to give away to the premiere performance this Saturday at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin. To be in with a chance to win, simply leave a comment below with a contact email, or send an email to lmackin@irishtimes.com. We’ll pick two names at random. The competition ends at noon this Wednesday, February 20th.

They open their set with Potter’s Lullaby, a lovely, warm track that sets out this band’s old-school stall. From there, drummer Hans Hulbaekmo introduces a sweet solo, drumming on the skins with his fingers and gradually layering up a groove that the band slickly fall in with. Like all the bands at 12 Points, HPC are young, but unlike most of the bands they have a sound and a feel that should be years beyond them.

This is a band of class and distinction built around the Wayne Shorter tones of Paulson’s tenor saxophone. There are no straightahead rock beats to pulse things through, no hip hop breaks or nods to electronica. This is straight-up jazz, delivered with style, from a band not afraid to disappear into a song and look like they are really enjoying themselves. Excellent work all round.

The set ends on Waltz for Lily, another touch of class with a gorgeous central melody on Paulson’s saxophone that everyone in the crowd seems to be humming in the bar afterwards.

Next up is one of the more anticipated sets at 12 Points. Nikolas Anadolis is the first Greek participant at the festival and it’s been worth the wait. Anadolis is technically formidable behind the grand piano, throwing a torrent of notes at every song and barely pausing for breath while the crowd hold theirs.

He is perhaps the most technically gifted musician at the festival. Home tutored by his father, Anadolis won a scholarship to Berklee College and won the Martial Solal Prize in Paris before he turned 19. His set here is much more classical than jazz, though he’s not above throwing in the odd bluesy swagger to show he’s got that area covered too. He throws reams of ideas at each song in a blistering performance, though he never looks out of control or troubled; indeed, the only time he looks slightly uncomfortable is in-between tracks, when he has to handle the copious rounds of applause, which he smiles through the whole time, looking like his itching to start playing again.

Anadolis never lets the pace drop in his pieces; at no point does he allow space to creep into the songs. There’s no doubting his musical intelligence, or his control, power and ability; but a bit more dynamic and a little more room for the tracks to breathe and emote could make this a more rounded and satisfying set. That said, being in the audience for an Anadolis concert in a venue this small certainly seems like a privilege that might never be repeated.

Here endeth the traditional lesson. The last act up tonight is Koenigleopold, a frankly deranged set-up of drums, synths, loops, vocals, piano, sounds, madness, rap, spoken word, terribly clothing, a bag full of tricks and one small stuffed monkey – and did I mention there’s only two of them?

If HPC and Anadolis show an utter respect for the tradition, Koenigleopold seem intent on tearing it down. They open with Lukas Koenig on drums and synths while Leo Riegler raps in several languages and loops effects, stopping and starting to furious effect and attacking each riff and line as if its the last track of the night. Then Riegler stops proceedings to play some beautiful atmospheric lines on the grand piano while Koenig sort of bends over and does some rubbish yoga left of centre stage.

Then its back into the hip-hop inflected madness with Rielger taking time, while looping samples and his vocals and playing saxophone, to toss that stuffed monkey around in a wok, which is the very narrative key that unlocks the meaning of what they’re up to. Maybe.

This sounds like a car crash, but it’s far from it for several reasons. Firstly, the duo have such a great sense of humour and an astute sense of theatrics about what they do, they could probably play a set of Chris de Burgh numbers and the crowd happily go along with it. Secondly, they are very, very good musicians and while the set is chaotic, its controlled, tempered chaos and only gets just as insane as they want it to. At no point are they not dictating the flow of the set. Thirdly, they are wearing crumpled powder blue suits and no shirts. And that, my friends, is a look no man or woman can resist.

This is an anarchic, defiantly brilliant end to the night, before the crowd decamp to the jam sessions across the road in the Sweeney Mongrel for some scorching improv. And now there’s just one more day to go in the most musically creative festival in Ireland.

First up were swiss act Thali, led by vocalist Sarah Büchi, a musician who has a fascination with the music of southern India, and lives partly in Dublin, where she teaches in Newpark Music Centre. The ensemble’s sound is an intriguing blend of her raga-rich vocals, stretched across microtonal scales, and a more straightforward European feel. It’s a cracking combination, fizzing with invention and complex rhythmic ideas, but without betraying a groove that will hook in even a casual listener.

The band’s approach reaches its zenith in a track built around the Indian konnakol technique of singing percussive lines. Büchi sets off at a rattling pace while the rest of the band fall in frenetic step behind her lead. It’s a formidable feat of rhythmic prowess and endurance, particularly from Andre Pusaz on the kit, that does the track justice. Büchi, though, is unlikely to realise her dream of hearing a stadium of fans singing this song at the top of their lungs; after all, we can’t all take free kicks like Ronaldo.

At one point, Büchi takes a back seat and lets the band build a really punchy rhythmic groove. This helps put her vocal in relief and further highlight the intricacies of what she is doing; the set could do with more instances of this. This is a strong collection of impressive music that easily wins over the Project’s full-house crowd.

On paper, Soil Collectors shouldn’t work. The Gothenburg band use just two vocalists and one drummer/pianist to build their musical landscapes – but what extraordinary vocalists. Isabel Sörling was last in these parts two years ago for 12 Points, and on this project she is joined by Hannah Tolf and Jonathan Albrektsson to create music that simply has to be experienced live.

The band tap into Nordic choral traditions, with strong ecological themes wrapped in mystical shamanism to create music that veers between the sublime and the terrifying. Tolk and Sörling use their cathedral-sized ranges to create soaring, almost unearthly harmonies that are looped and filtered live through a series of pedals, while Albrektsson adds primal pulse and dynamics that mean the songs never feel shapeless or accidental. If the vegans are right and plants feel pain, then Soil Collectors might have figured out what the earth sounds like when it’s being ripped up to build a car-park.

Soiled goods

If that sounds a little nebulous, the music is far from it – it is never more substantial than on Papa Please, a song about child abuse, which introduces a fantastic groove after a heartbreakingly tentative vocal intro. It carries the kind of visceral shock to the system you usually find only in novels such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

It’s not all anguish, though. Zero could rock a festival crowd to its roots and when the band leave the stage and ditch the amplification to sing from different parts of the room, the crowd isn’t long in joining in to clap and thump the beat. This is elemental stuff, and a barely believable musical experience that’s a privilege to witness.

Good soil

OKO were handed the unenviable task of following Soil Collectors, but at least the Dublin band could rely on a bit of hometown support to get things up and running. The band weave a glittering electronic curtain of music, with guitarist Shane Latimer popping frequencies, loop and whorls from his guitar and effects pedals, while Darragh O’Kelly reciprocates on piano and keyboards. Shane O’Donovan lays down busy beats and lines while Jack McMahon scratches samples and low-end beats on decks from the back of the stage.

OKO computers and more

The builds take place over long stretches, intricate with electronic texture. The groove remains intentionally elusive and often takes too long to make its presence felt. One track in particular, though, when they lock it in off the back of some strong piano melodies, is fantastic, producing a Mogwai-like scenario that shifts and shakes with energy and substance.

There’s no doubting the complexity of the songs, and they trade depth in electronic detail for a lightness in their emotional payload. If you like your sonic fields wide and cerebral, then this is the band for you.

Maher’s work, as if it needs saying, is outstanding, from the raw intimidation of her naturalist sculptures – briars and thorns lashed into a strange ball that seems to almost pulse out of the corner of one room – and the mystery of her film work – Cassandra’s Necklace features recent Ifta and Irish Times Theatre award winner Charlie Murphy – to her considerate, adroit installations. My favourite piece in the show is L’Universite, a site-specific piece made for the show that uses the venue’s former lecture halls and its indelible graffiti. There’s also an excellent guide to the exhibition here, for those who want more information on the pieces.

Ordinary deaths: Death of the Tradesmen is Shaun Dunne and Talking Shop Ensemble’s successor to I’m a Homebird. The show, which debuted at the Fringe in 2012, focuses on Willy, a 54-year-old tradesman down on his luck and scrabbling for work and nixers in a car-crash economy. It is the relationship between Willy, played by Dunne, and his wife, played by Lauren Larkin, that is at the heart of this show. As their situation hardens and the walls close in, Larkin struggles to maintain the small shard of domestic bliss it has taken her years to fence off, the cracks widen between them, and the security of their home life buckles and breaks under the battery of everyday bills and pressure. This is smart, effective and relevant theatre with strong performances that will leave a mark on any audience not made of stone. It’s at the Lir until Saturday.

Dance to remember: Body and Forgetting premiered at the Dublin Dance Festival, and an extended version of that piece is currently on a short tour of the country. Liz Roche is one of Ireland’s best choreographers, and here she has created a multimedia show, featuring film, live music and dance in which the performers appear and disappear, shifting into and out of memory, while a film by Alan Gilsenan plays on half the stage and Denis Roche’s live music lends a harsh, urgent edge to proceedings.

In a review for this paper of the DDF show, Michael Seaver wrote: “Roche asks what happens when our bodies experience a loss of memory and we no longer have that physical connection to our past … [The show is an] impressive multi-layered meditation on memory and identity.”

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DJ noted: If you find yourself in the people’s republic over the weekend, there’s an excellent line-up in the Pavilion on Friday night. Dirty Weekender 3 has music blogger supremo Nialler9 on a DJ roster that includes Mmoths, Young Wonder and Adultrock, and all for only a tenner. A gift and a half, then.

Get in: And if you’re not all jazzed out after the weekend’s 12 Points Festival, which I’ll be providing daily reviews from, try and hold back a little energy for Get the Blessing in Whelan’s on Tuesday. You might not have heard of the band, but you’ll certainly have heard of its parts: its rhythm section of Jim Barr and Clive Deamer also form the backbone of Portishead, and Deamer is part of Radiohead’s touring band.

I’ve an interview in Monday’s paper with Deamer, who has more than a few interesting things to say about jazz, rock, improvisation and the Bristol scene of the 1990s.

Get the Blessing, though, are a snarling, funky, bass heavy outfit with plenty of swagger and style. This video should get you rocking into the weekend. Expect them to take your head off live.

Click here to view the embedded video.

From there, the band move into the more composed More Ducks, a terrific track that spirals down into a rich soundscape that sounds like a film-noir quay-side scene: the kit and cowbells of Eeti Nieminen rattle like tin cans on a cobbled street; the sax of Linda Fredriksson honks softly like ships shifting in the night; and the double bass of Eero Tikkannen rattles with low thuds like rope and rigging.

Mopo double down on the sax. Photographs: John Cronin

Towards the end of the set, things get animalistic, with duck lures, squeaky pigs and rubber ducks all playing their part. There’s no doubting the band’s creativity and their sense of humour, but often these sections spill into self-indulgence. Rattling wood pieces together on stage is all well and good, but do you really need to nail them together? When they lock it in, though, the music is a joy to listen to, full of energy and ambition, and a great way to kick off a festival of fresh, challenging music.

It would be hard to find a larger contrast between Mopo and the second act of the evening, the Olivia Trummer Trio. The band call Berlin home, but their sound is pure pedigree New York (the group met and studied there). Trummer is a gifted pianist, with a vocal that’s crystal clear, and the band open with a series of classy standards. There’s a stylish take on Pure Imagination and a reworking of a Mozart sonata that gives plenty of scope for drummer Bodek Janke to built a classy foundation of lush Latin grooves.

OTT: A classy affair

This is a band rehearsed to a fine sheen who execute their tracks with confidence and style. They have a way to travel before they have a sound that’s distinctly their own, and while Trummer’s solos are expertly worked, it would be intriguing to hear the group go on the attack and take a few more musical risks. That said, the set is a welcome, elegant touch of class.

And anyway, if it’s risks you wanted, Ozma are more than happy to oblige. The Strasbourgian band end Friday’s night’s offering with a furious, formidable set. They have the look and feel of a group who have spent a terrifying amount of time in the rehearsal room, and it’s little surprise to learn they’ve been together for the best part of 10 years.

Stéphane Scharlé does his best Levon Helm impression

Guitarist Adreien Dennefeld punches through with staccato riffs or builds shimmering pools of music that saxophonist David Florsch runs his powerful lines over, while bassist Edouard Séro-Guillaume locks in an irresistible groove and drummer Stéphane Scharlé creates unpredictable, frenetic lines on the kit. From there, they ratchet up the tension, pushing the tracks towards a rock aesthetic before unleashing the taut dynamics altogether. The set is organic and exciting, with enough raw energy to power a small city, and sets the bar for the rest of the festival to follow.