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ab4 are a very interesting Romanian / Italian alternative rock band, that have been around for quite a few years. ab4 will play Sziget Festival 2009 on August 14, starting at 18:30 hours, according to their official MySpace page, that you can visit if you want to hear some of their songs.

According to culture.hu, The Ting Tings are likely to come to the Sziget Festival to play a show that also includes some of their new material, from their new album, that they will start recording soon in Berlin.

We have one or two new ideas but we have not started with the demos yet. Once again, it will be just the two of us in the studio and, for the time being, I have no idea what the new songs will sound like. Perhaps they will be a bit rougher but we are still thinking in terms of pop songs. We can only write pop songs. In the next few days, we are going to get all our stuff together and move over to Berlin where we will set up the studio above a jazz pub,” said singer Katie White.

The Ting Tings are set to play Sziget Festival 2009 on August 13.

First of all, you can download an official PDF of the full Sziget 2009 programmes here (or should we say the programmes so far). The source is the official French site.

Second of all, Szigetnews friend Tijn has sent us quite some interesting news. Dutch site Rock Blog says that the Sziget 2009 Zero Day, the Rock Against Racism Day, will have  some international acts, too, in addition to the local acts that will most certainly be present. More so, the official French Facebook site lists the question “Prognostics pour la tête d’affiche du Day Zero (11 août) ?”, meaning “any prognosis on who the Zero-Day headliner will be?”. Rock Blog, that spoken to the organizers, also say that some international names will be confirmed soon, and that we’ll know in the following weeks.

Who do you guys think the mystery headliner will be?

As our friend Tijn telles us, Hanggai, a Chinese band that plays Mongolian folk music, have just confirmed themselves for Sziget Festival 2009 on their official website. They will most certainly play the World Music Main Stage. They will play Sziget on August 16.

This year’s Sziget Festival will, of course, have a Blues Stage, that will feature mostly Hungarian acts, but also Karen Carroll & The Mississippi Grave Diggers. You’ll also get the chance to see a Zappa and a Doors tribute band, both Hungarian. The full schedule of the blues stage for this year’s Sziget festival has been published here.(thanks, fromhungary)

If you are one of those people that go to Sziget Festival, among other things, to check out the great gypsy acts at the Roma Tent, you will surely appreciate Parno Graszt, a fantastic Hungarian Gypsy music act that have been around for the last 20 years. They have an album in the works, that will be available for their first American tour, to happen this fall.

This great Hungarian Gypsy band will play the Roma Tent at Sziget 2009, on August 13, starting at 9:30 PM, according to their official MySpace page, on which you can also check out some of their songs.

Maybe they’re not such a well-known name, but this girl band seems to have atitude. Founded by four girls sharing a passion for music, Swedish girl band Kackten E Sait are set, according to their MySpace, to “change the world”. We don’t know if they’ll succeed, but they will play Sziget on August 13, according to that same MySpace page.

Two more new acts are confirmed for Sziget Festival 2009. The first one is DePedro, the artist name of Spanish guitarist Jairo Zavala. DePedro will be at Sziget Festival 2009 as a special guest of Calexico, as stated on his MySpace.

The second name is Hungarian band Esclin Syndo,  an interesting mix of intense guitars, metal bass, rock percussions, 80′s keyboard sounds, and the enormous voice of Dalma Berger which is forced to sound strange, but nonetheless it’s quite appealing, according to their presentation on the A38 site. They sound quite good to us. They are confirmed on their MySpace for August 13, at the WAN2 stage. Here’s their video for “Folklore”, for you to enjoy.