The label of "Guardian man" or "Guardian woman" is one that is bandied about as something of an insult these days. But if you can get past the name-calling and think about what might appeal to this imaginary couple (and possibly their kids) while standing in lush, green parkland in Oxfordshire, you might well come up with the line-up of writers, celebrities and music for this summer’s inaugural KITE Festival.

For the Oxford alt-rock mainstays Foals, the past two years brought an anti-climactic pause to a triumphant 2019: their meteoric trajectory had kept pace with their duo of albums, Everything Not Saved Will be Lost Part 1 and 2. The sister albums had given the group their first UK album #1 with Part 2, and their live reputation was glowing brighter still.

And then it all stopped.

Nobody could ever force guitarist Pat Metheny into doing the touring schedule he imposes upon himself. The 67 year-old still does well over 100 concerts a year. The current European tour alone, which started at the end of April and finishes in 10 days' time contains no fewer than 44 dates.

A guessing game could be played prior to Harry Styles taking to the stage at this gig, the first night of his UK tour and, as he later noted, his first stadium show as a solo act. There were ripples of excitement whenever anyone was near the stage as devoted fans tried to work out if that was the man himself getting ready to appear, and given that some fans had been camping out overnight in Glasgow just to be near the front, you can understand such feverish anticipation.

In 1990, teenage prodigy Ron Trent released a single on Armando’s Warehouse imprint. Recorded on cheap equipment it was, nevertheless, a staggering piece of music. Urgent, insistent and unrelenting its piercing strings, metallic cymbals and  juddering, robotic bass created a spiralling sense of joy that has remained undiminished for more than 30 years.

In 1966, the combo fronted by French sax player Barney Wilen issued an album of musical interpretations of each sign of the zodiac. In the US in 1969, Mort Garson released 12 albums, each dedicated to a single sign. Two years earlier Garson was behind the one-sign-per-track Cosmic Sounds album, credited to The Zodiac.

For those wishing to avoid the bloated plutocracy of #PlattyJoobs, the Great Estate Festival was the perfect antidote. Set in the beautiful estate of Scorrier House in Redruth, Cornwall it is described as “the most rambunctious garden fete”.

A gothic aesthetic is very common in the left field of electronic/club music these days – but it tends to go with fairly extreme sounds: either industrial pummelling, or glitched-out “deconstructed club” as in artists like Ziúr.

In these meta times when everything – EVERYTHING! – is ironic, a smirk to be replayed forever on a screen, the last thing we expect is a hippy, a proper real-life hippy, preaching oneness and love. Even yoga sorts these days mostly go on about their own “wellness”, rather than the cosmic inference of it all. Nick Mulvey’s previous albums were lightly marinaded in Baba Ram Dass and ayahuasca revelation but, with his third solo album, New Mythology, he’s gone full mystic.

The usherette’s hands are clamped over her ears, and Elvis Costello is playing like it’s 1996, when the briefly reunited Attractions played a pummelling last stand, burying fatal internal rifts with punk thunder.