SCOTS rockers Franz Ferdinand have been named as one of the headline acts for this year's Inveraray Castle music festival.
The line-up for the "boutique festival" in Argyll, which runs from 29 to 31 August, was announced yesterday.
Among the big names due to appear are the Welsh veteran rockers Manic Street Preachers, Kasabian, Sigur Ros, Spiritualised, Nick Cave's
Grinderman and the Gossip.
Franz Ferdinand, whose last release, You Could Have It So Much Better, was in 2005, are expected to perform tracks from their highly anticipated third album, which they spent last year producing.
Other Scots acts named for the event include Amy Macdonald and Paolo Nutini.
Now in its second year, the organisers revealed it was now sponsored by the power company Scottish Hydro Electric, resulting in it being renamed the Hydro Connect festival.
Billed as a different, more refined experience from its sister event, T in the Park, festival-goers are offered gourmet food, spa treatments and burlesque cabarets.
Geoff Ellis, the organiser, said: "Hydro Connect is about offering music fans a totally different festival experience.
"Last year's festival was the realisation of something I wanted to do since I first saw the grounds at Inveraray Castle.
"It is by far the most spectacular festival site I have ever seen in the UK and beyond, and the line-up, combined with the local produce and some really exciting alternative entertainment, makes it the perfect way for music fans to end the summer."
Hydro Connect is one of two festivals that were launched in a blaze of publicity last year in an attempt to address a music audience that is older than the teenage one for which T in the Park broadly caters.
However, the Outsider Festival, which was held at Aviemore in 2007, was shelved for this year, despite having received more than in public £250,000 funding.
The Outsider is one of three large-scale events that have failed to survive into 2008.
The Northern Lights arts festival, held in Durness, which was named the UK's best new festival in 2007, will not go ahead, and the Skye Music Festival, which boasted the likes of Kasabian, KT Tunstall and Primal Scream on its line-up, is almost certain not to return this year.
Promoters have claimed that too many events competing for audiences has meant that the music scene was becoming "overheated".
The full article contains 406 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
