Get ready to party — the festival season starts in earnest this weekend when RockNess blasts off on Friday.
All roads lead to Dores, near Inverness, for the north of Scotland’s biggest outdoor festival and this year it could hardly be better.
The Strokes, Fatboy Slim, Leftfield, Vampire Weekend, Doves, Ian Brown and Blondie are all ready to rock the fantastic Inverness festival.
The list goes on with Friendly Fires, Pendulum, Enter Shikari, Soulwax, Plan B, Alabama 3, The Cuban Brothers, Aphex Twin, Pearl and the Puppets, Twin Atlantic…
Meanwhile, the GoNorth stage features Dundee’s The Law and Healthy Minds Collapse from Fife, while The Ray Summers from Falkirk are on the Strongbow Stage.
For Andrew Douglas (Dougie), lead singer with The Ray Summers, it’s the icing on the cake for what was supposed to be a quiet year for the band.
“We played RockNess last year — I actually thought it was better than T in the Park, it was just a brilliant time.
“We had great intentions of being quiet this year, keep the heads down and record our album, but it’s been busier than ever so it’s all good.
“We supported The Charlatans. Tim Burgess came on the phone asking if we wanted to support them at Barrowlands. I took about a second to say yes.
“We’ve got a mutual friend in Manchester who passed on our stuff to Tim and he liked it, so got in touch.
“Then we were supposed to go down to Manchester and play as well, but our van broke down so we didn’t actually get there. But things keep popping up so we get pulled out of the studio, but the album’s going well though.
“We had great intentions of recording a pop-rock album but it’s become a bit darker.
“We’ve been writing while recording and we always think the new songs are better, so we’ve had to think about getting a balance between what we had before and the newer tracks.”