New dance festival to be held on RockNess site

Groove Armada will headline the festival

A new 5,000-ticket dance music event is to be held at the venue of the cancelled RockNess music festival.

Groove Loch Ness, a one-day one-stage festival, will be held in a field at Dores on the shores of the loch near Inverness on 22 August.

Acts confirmed include Groove Armada, 2 Many DJs, Radio 1's B Traits and Glasgow's Harri & Domenic.

RockNess, one of Scotland's largest music festivals, has not been held since 2013.

Its organisers cancelled 2014's event after failing to find dates that did not clash with with the World Cup and the Commonwealth Games.

The cancellation of this year's festival was announced in January.

Before 2014, the event had been held at Dores every June since 2006.

The event has been organised by Sam Barker, Joe Gibbs, Caroline Campbell and Dougie Brown

Groove has been set up by four people working in the music industry in Scotland.

Caroline Campbell is director of the Ironworks venue in Inverness, while Dougie Brown, Sam Barker and Joe Gibbs are involved in the running of the Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival near Beauly. Mr Gibbs was a co-founder of RockNess.

Mr Brown said: "We are really excited to be announcing the launch of Groove Loch Ness as the UK's newest dance festival.

"Having listened to the feedback from both Highlands audiences and those further afield over recent years we feel now is the time to bring back a purely dance festival for Scotland."

Radio 1 DJ B Traits has confirmed for the festival

2 Many DJs have been confirmed for the new festival

The Highlands and Islands also hosts other major festivals.

The 20th Hebridean Celtic Festival in Stornoway on Lewis marks its 20th anniversary this summer.

Singer songwriter Chastity Brown, from Minneapolis, Canadian folk music group Le Vent du Nord, Indian singer-songwriter Raghu Dixit and Michigan's Lindsay Lou and The Flatbellys will appear.

The festival will be held from 15 to 18 July.

HebCelt's 2013 event had a record-breaking attendance of 15,000.

Belladrum is also held over the summer and has a capacity of about 15,800.

Loopallu is held in Ullapool in autumn.

Last year's Loopallu sold out before any of its acts were announced.

All of the 2,500 tickets went before an announcement of the line-up, which included Utah Saints, The Undertones, Shed Seven and Alabama 3.

A new one-off festival for the Highlands was also announced earlier this year.

Mumford & Sons and singer Ben Howard are to stage a two-day music and arts festival at Rothiemurchus, near Aviemore, this summer.

The Stopover Festival at Rothiemurchus in the Cairngorms National Park will take place on 31 July and 1 August.

Primal Scream, The Maccabees, Lianne La Havas and Honeyblood will also be performing at the 25,000-ticket event.

The festival will be the only UK and European leg of the band's world tour to promote their third album, Wilder Mind.