It should be a starry night when I Am Kloot perform their astronomy-themed new album at the Deer Shed Festival at Topcliffe this weekend. Singer Johnny Bramwell tells Charles Hutchinson all about it.

NOT only are I Am Kloot headlining this weekend’s Deer Shed Festival but their latest album Sky At Night has inspired the North Yorkshire festival’s theme.

The Mercury Music Prize-nominated Manchester trio will be topping the bill tomorrow night in the parkland of Baldersby Park, Topcliffe, near Thirsk, and song-writing front man Johnny Bramwell is chomping at the bit already.

“I’ve got to be honest, I know this sounds like showbiz schmaltz, but we’re looking forward to this more than anything this year,” says Johnny.

“We’ve done Glastonbury, but we’ve done that before, and I love festivals of the size of Deer Shed. I’m going to rent a camper van, so I can make a weekend of it.”

He looks forward to the challenge of I Am Kloot being the main attraction but stresses that he does not make distinctions between different gigs. “Again it’s a bit of a cliché, but we don’t do gigs that aren’t important to us, but maybe I’ll feel an extra pressure – though I get nervous before every gig as I always want it to be as good as possible.”

Given the Sky At Night theme for the festival and the new peak of popularity that the album of the same name has brought I Am Kloot, Johnny knows where the focus will fall in tomorrow’s set.

“I think that because of the album’s success, we’re probably going to do the whole of Sky At Night and two or three songs from the other albums,” says Johnny.

One new element in the live show could be a familiar astronomer’s voice. “Patrick Moore may be involved in what we’re doing,” says Johnny. “Through our contacts at the BBC, we’re trying to get him to do a voiceover for the start, which we would play over our intro music.”

That would be out of this world, but then again, a celebrity presence is nothing new in I Am Kloot’s history. “We’ve had Christopher Eccleston ‘roadie’ for us once when he was in the videos for our singles Proof and Northern Skies and he ended up lugging our stuff on stage for us at a gig after we got him a ticket,” says Johnny.

Looking ahead, I Am Kloot have begun work on their next album. “We’ve started recording in Stockport, at Moulin Rouge, two days a week, and then we’ll be down at Blueprint in Salford in October to finish it,” says Johnny, who anticipates a spring release next year.

“I’m just sitting in the back garden right now with my computer and my pen… and reading the new book by [radio presenter] Andy Kershaw.”

Among the new compositions is Hold Back The Night. “It’s a provisional title, but there’s a feel about my new songs so far that this might be a dawn record, though you have to be careful about writing to a prescribed idea as it can be stilted,” says Johnny.

Watch this space for further developments. In the meantime watch the sky at night over Baldersby Park tomorrow when I Am Kloot bring out the stars.

• The Deer Shed Festival runs from today until Sunday at Baldersby Park, Topcliffe, Thirsk. See the festival website, deershedfestival.com