Stars Truck: part II

Nagatha Krusti: We've only just got the joke in the name. Yet more ska-punk, this time with a disturbingly nu-metal edge and hopefully with more audible vocals than on these tracks.
Neon Productions: A modern dance company, as far as we can tell. They've collaborated with Youthmovies and type2error, in any case, so clearly have something beyond cliche going for them.
nervous test_pilot: We notice from his actual news page that he's met (very) loose associate Kieron Gillen, which is something we didn't expect to see flagged up while we were compiling this. Hard-edged electronica, anyway.
Niall Spooner Harvey: Must try and make it actually into the cabaret tent at some stage. Harvey is "a poet/comedian/poet who never fails to simultaneously squeeze laughter and fear out of on-lookers". It says here.
Pacific Ocean Fire: We're certain we saw some of their set in the Musician tent at last year's Summer Sundae, their local festival, but seemingly didn't mention it on the review. Calexico/Neil Young Americana, in any case.
Peepin’ Paddy’s Skylarkin’ Shedshow: More DJing, and widely acclaimed one at that. But in a shed. Thus, the effect.
Penned In the Margins: Poetry really must be the new rock'n'roll. Let them tell you what to expect themselves.
Penny Broadhurst: Now this seems intriguing even though it's yet more bloody performance poetry, as Broadhurst has supported Patrick Wolf, Damo Suzuki, Melt Banana, Help! She Can't Swim, DARTZ! and Frank Turner among others. She's hosting the cabaret tent too, apparently.
Persil: Automatic favourites! Do you see? Dutch Peel-favoured duo do yet another warped version of pop, electronically bedded to Martine Brinksma's skyscraping vocals and darting off at all angles as the mood takes.
Post Potato Theatre Co: A theatre company. At a wild guess.
Rachael Dadd: A return to nu-folk stylings from a delicate Bristolian who's been in Jeffrey Lewis' band. There's definitely something in the air with so many Vashti Bunyanesque singers around at the moment, and they should keep it coming, within reason.
Ralfe Band: Not on the big list but on the schedules, critically acclaimed alterna-psych-folk doesn't always translate - in honesty we've had trouble pinning them down so far - but it's fast winning them something of an audience.
randomNumber: More music to nearly soothe the savage brain, in the form of wildly chopped up IDM beats like 65daysofstatic at rest or some of Kieran Hebden's more linear live moments.
Rebecca Mosley: Ooh, is that an autoharp? It's folklike, yes, but harder to pin down, like KT Tunstall if she'd been truer to the Fence Collective approach, or more pleasingly should she pop by Grace Slick acoustic. We're going to have to keep an eye on this one.
Redjetson: Someone somewhere is waiting to call Redjetson the new Doves, but it's more than that. Maybe if they'd been on Factory first time around. Widescreen epicness has been done quite a bit in recent years and they've not grabbed us yet, but by all accounts they're something of a live experience.
Regina Spektor: Split that big bar of opinion right down the middle! It depends on how you view the word 'kooky', we suppose, or what your tolerance of Tori Amos and the Dresden Dolls' respective musical worldviews is.
Seafood: After an absolutely shameless campaign Seafood get a go at Truck to promote their fourth album having seen David Line go down ill at precisely the wrong moment four years ago and ruin their chances of making it big. Still skyscraping, hopefully.
Seth Lakeman: Has anyone else seen the adverts for Lakeman's new single on the music channels? It's out on the 8th August! Now he's on a major they're not trying to sell him as a trad-folk Blunt, are they?
Shimura Curves: We did these in the Weekender Myspace feature a few weeks back and now everybody seems to be falling for their scrappy laptop harmonic Magnetic Fields-type shameless electropop. They have ILM connections. Do not hold this against them.
Si Roche: Dunno. Might be one of those newfangled VJs.
Simon Amstell: No way will we get into the tent for this. We trust we're all aware now of the great height from which he shits on Alex Zane, leaving aside dark rumours of Friday night Channel 4 entertainment pilots.
Skindred: Oh good lord. Headlining the Barn are these well respected metal ragga hip hop punks, nothing that Bad Brains didn't do louder and, well, better, but you won't be allowed to stand still. Or hear afterwards.
Skullthrash: Whither bandnames with mystique? So that'll be thrash metal with treble speed drumming, light speed fretwork and Bruce Dickinson resurrected up front. Has everyone stopped going on about Dragonforce yet?
Soundz: Lucky we've not got a link for these as with a name like that we can barely bring ourselves to comment.
Suitable Case For Treatment: They did a single with Jon Snow doing a monologue over the top that got them onto Richard & Judy! Grieg/Rican of the Guillemots was in them for a bit! Their singer's a bit mad! Er...
Teknikov: They claim their 2003 set was the worst the festival had ever seen. Old fashioned analogue electronica taking up where the second Liars album led off will do that to a band.
The Black Madonnas: With 80s Matchbox on extended leave there's a post-psychobilly hole that needs filling and here's Truck Records' own candidates, theatricality mixed with full on commitment. This'll test the mettle of the easily wilting.
The Cold Hands Trio: A DJ set, if that's any use to you.
The Dusty Sound System: Robin Bennett and as many mates as he can round up, previously including assorted members of Ride, Electric Soft Parade, Get Cape Wear Cape Fly and all points west, go for goodtime country-folk.
The Early Years: On very early on Sunday morning for some reason, a promising feast of effects pedals, Swervedriver commitment and Secret Machines self-extension will wake plenty up.
The Electric Soft Parade: Math Priest appears to still be in the band, in case you were interested. They're on Truck these days and have a new album ready for next year, it says here. Worth a look.
The Epstein: And another band with Bennett connections, looser this time, occasionally propping up their Gram Parsons taking the other half of country and western as his inspiration poignant hoedowns.
The Futureheads: Everyone appears to be down on this booking on the official Truck forum. Sod 'em, we've never been able to see them live despite our immense love of their first album and growing appreciation of News And Tributes. This side, you sing with Barry, and that side, you sing along with Jaff.
The Half Rabbits: Ulp, someone's been listening to Turn On The Bright Lights. And The Back Room. Pledging allegiance to Nirvana and metal is all very well and good, but there's still the insistent bass and half-Ian Curtis vocals at play.
The Invisible Man: Pass.
The Madeleines: And one more hurrah for the New Wave! Interpol/Cure guitars, Smiths nods and vocal delivery very reminiscent of someone we can't quite place to go.
The Neutrinos: More recent 'stars' of Weekender, when we called them "superficially so indebted to PJ Harvey...Karen Reilly has a voice and range that can't be ignored...Bet they're a hell of a live band." Well?
The Organ: Vancouver's fem-filled happy-sad Cure Division Smithsonians pop by with what seems to be an ever improving live show and a sense of purpose that is all their own.
The Piney Gir Country Roadshow: The ever popular off-kilter singer-songwriter drags half the festival on with her in a good year. This won't be her electronica side, at a guess. Supported Erasure last year, curiously.
The Priscillas: Another band who've been about for a bit, the Joan Jetts, or possibly Cramps, to everyone else's Shangri-Las/Go-Gos/Andrews Sisters, in costumes and with post-ironic shape throwing as standard. They're not the Suffrajets, at least.
The Race: Reading outfit who seem to have been here or hereabouts for a while now, but only get round to their debut album release next month. Arcade Fire and Sigur Ros comparisons are stretching it a bit, as we hear Jeff Buckley soundscapes grafted onto Morning Runner.
The Research: Some call them twee, with their silly caps and kitsch keyboard sounds, but they'd rather you called them a fun sight and/or sound with a grey-hearted edge. Of course they split opinion massively!
The Rhonda Valley Pigeon Federation: Good lord, who calls a band that and expects to get away with it? The singer's apparently made a Nick Drake-esque solo album, but what that means in a band context we can't say.
The Rock Of Travolta: Recently reactivated locals who supported Radiohead at South Park still going all out for carefully crafted but still with much abandon dramatic instrumental pre-and-post-rock.
The September Gurls: If we are to reactivate West Coast harmonic pop it might as well be a West Coast man who does it. Daniel Black and whoever he can round up rolls you gently awake, usually.
The Schla La Las: Now officially part of the 'new girl group' scene, although they've actually been together and playing Truck for years. Together very unliterally, you understand, as theirs is of the Thee Headcoatees range of matching costume girlism.
The Sound Movement: And the 80s revival continues apace, although this pan-continental outfit appear more open about their debt to the Chameleons especially and Factory widely, with more than a dash of Ride for the locals.
The Walkoff: "Horrible dance music", they call it, and it appears many have the same thought about them, but we've heard this kind of electronically enhanced stare-out rock a lot recently. Imagine a Polysics who were all male and took it all seriously.
The Young Knives: Hot summer. Hot hot summer. Hot summer. Hot hot summer. The sort-of-local lads who have been around longer than you'd think start their chart-bound victory lap at the home festival.
Thomas Truax: A perennial people's favourite, Truax makes his own instruments and delivers songs pitched between showtunes and Tom Waits on them. He doesn't sound like a lot else, especially live by the sounds of it.
Timothy Victor: Occasional black sheep of the Broken Family Band does roots Americana with an Essex accent just along from Albarn's and an intimacy that's all his own.
Tobias Jonathan Kidd: No. Next!
Toob: Live drums and electronic voices, which is an interesting idea. A former Red Snapper and an ex-Aloof producer mix up electro house, vocal chillout and all points west in a take on the genre that actually seems to work live.
Total Science: More breakbeat frenzy, with the now requisite soul vocals...actually, it might be this Total Science instead, reviving drum'n'bass in a not dissimilarly groove-friendly fashion. Thus, the surprise of the festival bill.
Tough Love: The big unashamed glam revival is on at the moment, not that for many it ever went away. Not even the decency to adopt over the top makeup and glitter just in case anyone fancied a go.
Trademark: One of A Scholar And A Physician's day job, as it were, is doing an modernist 80s synth thing, Pet Shop Boys model rather than Howard Jones and elements of Hot Chip. What you initially thought Lorraine would sound like.
Trashy DJs: Trashy being a local indie club. Obvious now you realise.
undertheigloo: Like pretty much everyone else on the bill they namecheck Mogwai and Sigur Ros, but we're reminded of a superior version of one of those post-Coldplay major label feeding frezy bands but with synth awareness and more delicacy.
Wednesday’s Child: There is a Wednesday's Child on Myspace, but their last message put them on hiatus, so who knows.
Winnebago Deal: Fucking racket alert with the celebrated post-metal duo who were doing all-out unsubtle speed freakery long before you'd heard of Lightning Bolt.
Xhadrez: Edinburgh ex-Broken Family Band sideman (another one!) takes a rather more surprising turn into downbeat, minimal electronica after To Rococo Rot, glitch soundscapes that makes you hope he's on very late at night.
Xmas Lights: Enormous sounding hardcore metal with the odd set of spiralling guitars, requisite indecipherable vocals and, at a guess, a distinct lack of onstage shirt wear.
Y: Droney, very more than slightly worrying LA Velvets/Tom Petty crossover, if you can imagine such a thing. He's recorded with Juliette Lewis and Joseph Arthur so clearly others think he has something going for him.
Yogi: Loads of Yogis on Myspace, none really what we're looking for.
Youthmovies: You might know them as Youth Movie Soundtrack Strategies, the wusses. They're still the same full-on post-hardcore postrock favourites trailing nobody's path but their own. After all that - 149 bands, we think, but we're not counting them - it's good to come across a band as sharp as they are to liven us back up. See you at the Rotary Club stalls.