The AltSounds Ultimate Guide To: FM4 Frequency Festival 2012

Despite what your thermometer is saying, the summer has arrived and with the weather as gloomy as this one, it might be worth looking elsewhere in Europe for a sunny wellie-free festival.

The FM4 Frequency Festival held in St. Polten Austria, is one of our own AltSounds' favorites (reached #3 in our 2011 festival TOP 5) and as always it comes with a bulletproof line up. This year we also have one more day of festival (a total of 4 days) with an unmissable opening night on Wednesday that features the mighty Black Keys performing right before The Killers (I'm sure that running order isn't right) and earlier in the afternoon you will also be able to enjoy of Ed Sheeran.

The list of acts of the weekend continues with The Cure, Maximo Park, coming straight from the US The Dandy Warhols, The Maccabees (whom will probably play every single festival this summer), Brendan Benson, Glasvegas, Enter Shikari, the comeback of Bloc Party and a handful of guitar friendly bands like The Cribs, The-must-see-Hives and Noel Gallagher with his high flying birds.

Plus two little jewels for the altr-ock fans: Placebo and Korn (that may or may not have not gone completely dubstep by now) and why not a bit of electro-greatness in the hands of The XX and the recently re-heated Hot Chip.

While all of this is happening there is also a parallel festival going on in a field nearby, and as the main arena closes for the night, there will be free buses to take you on a two minutes ride to what they call the "Night Park" (or what we call a group of tents with DJs). The headliners of this all-nighter are Magnetic Man and Modeselektor and I predict that the Moguai tent will be quite crowded too.

Basically all genres are covered and we are missing one very important element: the weather! Clear blue skies almost guaranteed and since the festival area is on a beautiful campus field, only a tiny portion of it is made of grass, and the rest is good all mud-proof concrete.

The walk from the camping site to the main field has paths that cross a little creek which leads to complete different side of the park which complements the scenario and makes it even more enjoyable. The most common drink is plain pints, and there is no drink token system or huge queues at the bars, actually most of the alcohol re-fillers are near the stages so you won't have to miss any second of the performance. The two main outdoor stages will contain most of the action, but there's also a couple of smaller indoor ones in case you would like to hide from the sun for a bit (my guess is that you wont).

You can still get tickets here: http://www.musicticket.at and they are at 130 Euros which is a complete bargain if we consider that any mayor UK festival does not come down from 170 (Pounds!). There is also an option to buy VIP or Comfort tickets which will grant you access to nicer camping facilities and to the amazing VIP bar/terrace where you can sit in the sun and enjoy of your favorite band playing in the main-stage with a cold cocktail in your hand (that would have probably cost you the equivalent of 2 Pounds).

No excuses to miss this amazing festival!!