Oxegen

Oxegen /ˈɒksɛdʒɛn/ was a music festival in Ireland, first held from 2004–2011 as a rock and pop festival and again in 2013 with dance and chart acts only. The event was regularly cited as Ireland's biggest music festival, and, by 2009, it was being cited as the greenest festival, being a 100% carbon neutral event in Ireland. It was previously called Witnness, which ran from 2000 and was sponsored by Guinness. The event is promoted by MCD and is sponsored by Heineken. Oxegen was originally a three-day festival, but from 2008 onwards, it was expanded to four days.

It took place at the Punchestown Racecourse in County Kildare, Ireland and has an average attendance of around 60,000 a day, with around 50,000 of these camping on site for the duration, and the rest travelling to the site each day. It takes place on the same weekend as T in the Park in Scotland and shares a very similar lineup each year, but Oxegen is generally regarded as Ireland's version of the Glastonbury Festival, with the 2008 festival sharing three of the same headliners as its English counterpart.

Florence and the Machine

Florence and the Machine (styled as Florence + the Machine) are an English indie rock band that formed in London in 2007, consisting of lead singer Florence Welch, Isabella Summers, and a collaboration of other artists. The band's music received praise across the media, especially from the BBC, which played a large part in their rise to prominence by promoting Florence and the Machine as part of BBC Introducing. At the 2009 Brit Awards they received the Brit Awards "Critics' Choice" award. The band's music is renowned for its dramatic and eccentric production and also Welch's vocal performances.

The band's debut studio album, Lungs, was released on 6 July 2009, and held the number-two position for its first five weeks on the UK Albums Chart. On 17 January 2010, the album reached the top position, after being on the chart for twenty-eight consecutive weeks. As of October 2010, the album had been in the top forty in the United Kingdom for sixty-five consecutive weeks, making it one of the best-selling albums of 2009 and 2010. The group's second studio album, Ceremonials, released in October 2011, entered the charts at number one in the UK and number six in the US. The band's third album, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, was released on 2 June 2015. It topped the UK charts, and debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, their first to do so. The album reached number one in a total of eight countries and the top ten of twenty. Also in 2015, the band was the headlining act at Glastonbury Festival, making Florence Welch the first British female headliner this century.

Machine (disambiguation)

A machine is a device that uses energy to perform some activity or task.

Machine, Machines, Machinery, The Machine, or The Machines may also refer to:

Term of art

More specific applications of the general term

Computing

Festival

A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect of that community and its religion or traditions, often marked as a local or national holiday, mela or eid. Next to religion and folklore, a significant origin is agricultural. Food is such a vital resource that many festivals are associated with harvest time. Religious commemoration and thanksgiving for good harvests are blended in events that take place in autumn, such as Halloween in the northern hemisphere and Easter in the southern.

Festivals often serve to fulfill specific communal purposes, especially in regard to commemoration or thanksgiving. The celebrations offer a sense of belonging for religious, social, or geographical groups, contributing to group cohesiveness. They may also provide entertainment, which was particularly important to local communities before the advent of mass-produced entertainment. Festivals that focus on cultural or ethnic topics also seek to inform community members of their traditions; the involvement of elders sharing stories and experience provides a means for unity among families.