Costello Calling

The music programme for this year's Belfast Festival at Queens has some quality moments. Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares is a bunch of female singers from Bulgaria who perform in the ancient, open-throat style and make you feel like you're in some Byzantine rapture. I doubt that there are any original vocalists left from the 1975 album (later reissued by 4AD, you should own this), but the version of the choir I witnessed at the Southbank around 15 years ago was swoonsome and they are surely still up to the challenge.

Elsewhere during the festival you can see James Vincent McMorrow, Billy Bragg, Tinariwen and excitingly, Elvis Costello. I last saw him at The Waterfront in 2002, sharing the stage with Emmylou Harris, John Prine, Nanci Griffith and Steve Earle. They were campaigning against landmines and making a glorious sound. Most of my Costello moments have been uplifting and October 28 is pretty much mandatory.

John Niven is the author of Kill Your Friends, a shocking bit of fiction about the UK music industry in 1997. Britpop is about to burst, cocaine usage is rampant and the music industry has yet to cop the severe hubris of file-sharing. The central character, a repellent, pathological A&M man, is properly lurid and the references to American Psycho are well earned.