All Points East (APE) Festival is back again in Victoria Park. We covered last year’s phenomenal event, which marked the return of festivals and cemented the event in its new August Bank Holiday timeslot.

For 2022 the festival returns with 6 days of performances and free events in the midweek round Victoria Park, this year will be the most extensive iteration to date. At The Perfect Tempo, we’re far too excited to wait to attend the festival to write about it, so we’ve decided to tell you about 10 acts that would be a crime to miss…

Nia Archives has had an unprecedented pandemic (horrible cliché intended). Using the time to push her creativity to its limits, she’s released two exceptional EPs in the last two years. Her blended style of Jungle, Soul, and RnB pulls you back to the feeling of Jungle when it was young; full of experimentation, energy, and above all joy. Her most recent single Luv Like has clear notes of the genuine ecstasy of DJ Die’s Autumn, perhaps unsurprisingly due to her close mentorship from the DnB legends at V recordings. Having grown up surrounded by Caribbean Soundsystem culture (reggae, dub, and even jungle were staples at her family gatherings, playing from her grandmother’s sound system), and being renowned for her amazing song selection, her live sets were destined to have her signature infectiously big energy.

Having preceded their 2022 world tour by helping create the Kunspalast museum’s exhibition of electronic music as well as being the centrepiece for the exhibition itself, the robot pop innovators are ready once more to reveal what the 168-hour working week at Kling Klang Studios has produced. Having felt that in the 20th-century analogue technology was not good enough for their vision, Kraftwerk’s move to digital technology has proven incredibly successful; their vision and innovation has been allowed to flourish ever since. Judging from their performance at Bluedot festival in 2019 alone, it can be said that these legends of electronic music are somehow just hitting their stride.

With their new album CRAWLER, it feels as though IDLES are maturing into their creative prime. Talbot’s lyrics recount his traumas from over the last 20 years and find beauty in being able to reflect and accept such pain. The album is a pandemic creation, so coming from a band where the energy is already pushed to its height, this reaches for the stratosphere. Their partnership with producer Kenny Beats – who generally sticks to hip-hop – in this and the previous album is interesting, and they have attributed a lot of their sonic experimentation to having his talent handy. Their tour has so far shown the profound power of communal catharsis through music, as the full spectrum of extreme emotion is forced from the audience’s bodies. This is the one to let out all your frustrated pandemic energy and absorb the community spirit once more.

Robin Pecknold’s ability to create waves of harmony across instruments is the musical pairing to a warm summer’s afternoon we’ve been praying for. The new album Shore sees Pecknold move away from his original band members and bring in different collaborators, allowing for growth and movement whilst maintaining his own style. The majority of the writing process was done in isolation throughout the pandemic, and though this isn’t too dissimilar to his usual creative process, he notes feeling the acute pain of loneliness. This certainly pervades the album, and will no doubt provide a space for all the reflection upon the past few years and allow us to steadily come to understand its further impact on us as a society.

Floating Points is very quickly solidifying his status as a legend of British music. His ability to live in the grey area between electronic and acoustic music is a testament to his fundamental understanding of music. He is not limited by genre or form and allows his style to unfold as it needs to, picking up pieces of whichever part of the musical world it needs to further its cause. For this to be the case, the artist must have an unthinkable breadth of knowledge, and an insatiable passion for further discovery. These attributes lend themselves to fascinating DJ sets; Shepherd can connect parts of the musical landscape that to a mere mortal would seem impossible. This will be a real trip.

Always bringing as much humour as there is rage to their music, Sleaford Mods have for over a decade tapped into the undercurrent of revolt that lies within Britain. Andrew Fearn’s industrial sounding beats unleash a world of energy and wonky mania for Jason Williamson’s words and rhythms to thrive in. The combination is always startlingly raw, more atonally rhythmic than melodic, allowing for a crystal-clear battle cry. They beg you to change the ‘depressing cul de sac’ that Britain can often fall into, and their energy shows us that the power is in our hands to do so.

Hold onto your brain cells, Squarepusher is lurking. Expect brutal drum rhythms and mind-bending basslines, with the bass played live by the man himself. His shows are filled with improvisation, amazing visuals, and music without boundaries. Whether it is from his seminal album Feed Me Weird Things, a jazz bass solo, or an electroacoustic exploration, his performances always promise to break your concept of what kinds of music fit within the same brackets, or if there are brackets at all. It is hardly surprising coming from a man who says he sees music as groups of numbers - he’s set to break the Matrix this year.

Michael Kiwanuka can nurture subtle and complex emotions and express them with warmth and vulnerability. He uses gospel influences (among others, of course) with finesse, taking an age-old tradition and legitimately putting a new twist on it, a rare feat. It seems mad now that he was initially unconvinced by his singing voice, but his bravery (both in terms of pushing through this insecurity and taking the step to leave the Royal Academy of Music) has pushed him to believe in himself and his style, and this distinctly comes through in his music. This Hyundai Mercury Prize winner shouldn’t be missed.

With experimentation and jamming as the cornerstone of the band’s direction, a live performance from this band is always going to be a spectacle. King Gizzard are a group that doesn’t feel like they have a centred sound, and yet they manage to still sound individual and coherent. The highly prolific band - they’ve made 15 albums in the last 8 years, and put out 5 further albums throughout the pandemic - have recently released their second double album which flits from more traditional psych-rock to metal to jazz to modern indie rock to something closer to hip-hop with an Indian twist (The Grim Reaper), so be ready for anything!

2-D, Murdoc, Noodle, and Russel Hobbs are back for more and who can blame them. Their last album Song Machine went in so many directions through so many varying collaborators that their collective insanity has evidently ratcheted up a notch. Having very recently played a few songs from their upcoming album The Static Channel, their tour promises to be full of fresh sounds as well as the ones that seem incapable of being overplayed. Seeing as Thundercat was last seen on stage with them in Uruguay, and the last album featured Elton John and Skepta, who knows who will be joining them on stage in Victoria Park. And, of course, we mustn’t forget the visuals; it is the only live show I’ve been to where I looked at the back screen for longer than the band. They are simple but addictive, technicoloured, deranged, and addictive, and simple, and deranged. There I go getting lost just thinking about it…

If you want to watch this excellent selection of artists over this August Bank Holiday, then pick up the remaining tickets from the All Points East ticket site here.