New music festival for Dublin

A new open-air festival titled Longitude is scheduled to take place at Marlay Park in Rathfarnham in south Co. Dublin on the weekend of 19-21 July.

The three-day festival will be headlined by veteran German synthesiser-rock group Kraftwerk, along with French band Phoenix and New York's Vampire Weekend and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Also included in the line-up are British acts Foals and singer-songwriter Jake Bugg, American indie band Modest Mouse, and Dublin groups Villagers and Kodaline, among many others.

Marlay Park will have three stages – two of them outdoor – and there will be an arts and crafts dimension to the "boutique" festival.

The crowd capacity for each day will be 9,500, with a mixture of day and weekend tickets, however there are no camping facilities.

The event is expected to compete with the Forbidden Fruit festival, which runs from 1-2 June at Dublin's Royal Hospital Kilmainham.

Meanwhile organisers of the annual Electric Picnic, which has taken place every summer since 2004 in Co. Laois south of the capital, say that the three-day festival will take place as usual this year, despite incurring massive losses in recent years.