The Great Escape 2011 - Preview (Friday)

To say that the line-up of bands for the second day of The Great Escape is possibly the best in the events history is no exaggeration. The list of must see acts is so overflowing that the deluge is akin to a waterfall. Be warned, you will suffer from the dreaded line-up clash syndrome today. Amongst the bands playing you will find many artists that we’ve featured previously on Breaking More Waves, including Rachel Sermanni, The Staves, Idiot Glee, Kyla La Grange, Creep, Delta Maid, Teeth, Chad Valley, Still Corners, Visions Of Trees, James Vincent McMorrow, Treeflight For Sunlight, Various Cruelties, Breton, Polarsets, Cloud Control, Charli XCX and more. Picking five as recommendations is near impossible, but choose we must, so here we go with four acts that we’ve written about before and one newbie.

Admiral Fallow - Green Door Store 14.45, Fortune of War 19.00 and Above Audio 21.00

You have three chances to catch Scottish folk rock band Admiral Fallow on the Friday in Brighton. Failure to attend at least one of these shows will find you standing in the corner with a dunce’s hat on your head. With evocative songs from their immaculately produced album Boots Met My Face, Admiral Fallow capture the hearts of many who hear them. If you’re going to Great Escape maybe it will be your turn next?

Admiral Fallow - Subbuteo

Ghostpoet – Digital 20.00

Imagine Maxi Jazz from Faithless sleepily rapping over d-i-y laptop beats and electronic flows that have the essence of Massive Attack in their vibe and you’ll be getting close to the sounds of Ghostpoet aka Obaro Ejimiwe. We’ve already suggested that Ghostpoet could be a potential Mercury prize nominee for his downtempo treasure of an LP Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam and Great Escape gives you a chance to see why. Call us old fashioned, but it’s so nice to hear a rapper who doesn’t have to resort to swearing all the time to get his message across and his tracks get quickly under the skin without the need for foul language.

Ghostpoet - Longing For The Night

Ed Sheeran – Concorde 2 20.45

Ed continues to confuse people with his mix of folk, rapping, soul and realness of a classic singer songwriter. One moment he’s collaborating with grime artists like Devlin and Wiley, the next he’s covering Jamie Woon with just an acoustic guitar and loop pedal on Later With Jools. This pick and mix approach sits uncomfortably with those who like their music filed in neat categorised boxes. Yet many people are tapping into what Sheeran does. He is growing a huge live following, his gigs are selling out wherever he plays and with his first major label album, simply titled ‘+’ due for release later this year, his name could become very well-known indeed.

Ed Sheeran - You Need Me

Let’s Buy Happiness – Prince Albert 21.15 (Also playing on Saturday at Queens Hotel 14.30)

Cast your mind back to our preview of Great Escape last year and you’ll find the name Let’s Buy Happiness as one of our recommendations. Unfortunately on that occasion the band didn’t quite live up to our expectations but since then we’ve seen them play a number of live shows and they get better and better each time. Beautiful ethereal and tremulous female vocals, complex guitar work and drums that thwack perfectly, this year we have every confidence that Let’s Buy Happiness will wow Brighton.

Let's Buy Happiness - Six Wolves

Walk The Moon - The Loft 23.30

Our final recommendation for Friday is the only band we haven’t featured on the blog before. Walk The Moon play energetic hooky indie rock / pop and in their song Anna Sun have a tune that sounds suspiciously like The Killers. They may not be bundled up with pounds full of originality, but with a late night show booked for Great Escape we can easily imagine this bands good-time sounding tunes scoring high with the masses – maybe Great Escape is the time to take a stroll with them ?

Anna Sun by Walk The Moon