Best music festival - that isn't T in the Park

BEST of the rest of the fests

HEBRIDEAN CELTIC FESTIVAL, Stornoway, www.hebceltfest.com

A veritable veteran, having first been staged in 1996, the event attracts a 15,000-strong audience over its four days, despite its remote location. Major acts like The Waterboys, Van Morrison, The Proclaimers, Runrig and Afro Celt Sound System have headlined in the big blue tent in the wooded waterfront grounds of Lews Castle.

The festival – which attracts visitors from as far afield as Australia, Japan and Canada as well as all over Europe – has also helped raise the profile of home-grown acts like Shooglenifty, Salsa Celtica and the Peatbog Faeries by giving them major slots. This year’s festival, which runs from today until Saturday, features Seth Lakeman, the Saw Doctors, the Red Hot Chilli Pipers and Julie Fowlis.

BELLADRUM TARTAN HEART www.tartanheartfestival.co.uk

Now five years old, the lovely Belladrum Tartan Heart festival has proved itself among Scotland’s proliferation of new boutique festivals. Bella, as she is affectionately known, has consistently and quietly been serving up a reward of fine tunes and food to those who make the pilgrimage to see her in her Highland hideaway. She is known for securing the right up-and-coming bands, such as the Guillemots, as well as the classics, like James.

In the words of the latter’s guitarist, Larry Gott: “It’s the way festivals should be, like in the early days when they were quirky.” New up this year: the Verb Garden, a place to settle in to some hard thinking – poetry, comedy, debate and performance – and the organic mart where you can stock up on unreconstructed fruit ’n’ veg.

It runs from 8-9 August and features The Lemonheads, Scouting For Girls, The Waterboys and Idlewild.

THE BIG CHILL, www.bigchill.net Set in beautiful castle grounds in the Malvern Hills, the appropriately named Big Chill is a welcome antidote to large-scale, more commercial festivals like V or even Glastonbury. The line-up is always completely varied and unpretentious, with an eclectic list of little-known electronica and world music acts sharing the bill in recent years with the established bands like the Proclaimers. The facilities – including a genuinely “quiet campsite and proper showers – are fantastic and, best of all, it’s nearly always hot and sunny. Runs from 1-3 August.

WIZARD FESTIVAL: Having made it into its second year, the Wizard Festival looks as if it is achieving its ambitions to become an Aberdonian Glastonbury, which can only be good for the North-east, which has lacked a music event of this size over the years. Held at New Deer in the Buchan countryside on 22-23 August, among its line-up for this year are festival-favourites Supergrass, punk veterans the Damned and Alabama 3.

HYDRO CONNECT www.connectmusicfestival.com Having gained the prefix of “Hydro” earlier this year and the sponsorship that it entails, it looks as though the coolest of the “boutique” festivals is here to stay. It certainly made the biggest splash of the new events last year, touting itself as the grown-up, more-refined elder brother of T in the Park. Certainly, the idyllic setting of Inveraray Castle in Argyll is a step away from the barren spaces you usually find festivals inhabiting, while the presence of fine dining outlets means no more limp greasy burgers.

But it’s the decent line-ups that have caught people’s imaginations. For a festival to attract the likes of the Beastie Boys, Franz Ferdinand and Goldfrapp in its first two years is pretty much unheard of. On 29-31 August.