We reach our final 4 Breaking More Waves recommendations of acts to see at Brighton’s Great Escape Festival for 2015. Whilst we’ve narrowed our choices down to just 20 we could have quite easily listed 50 or 60 artists and no doubt there are others that are as yet unknown to us, waiting to be discovered. But choose we must, and so here are our final 4.
Recommendations
17. Fickle Friends
Their Alt-Escape show last year at the ‘Blog-Up’ promoted gig at The Mesmerist drew a big crowd, and with their indie / pop / dance cross breeding songs such as Swim, Could Be Wrong and For You all gaining some serious internet love, local kids Fickle Friends should be guaranteed a decent audience for 2015.
18. Tears & Marble
Tears & Marble consists of Cris Kuhlen and Bella Hay from the Netherlands. As far as we can remember, they’re only Dutch act to ever appear on Breaking More Waves (they were first introduced back in January 2014 in a sleep deprived blogging charity marathon). Great Escape will be this duo’s UK debut performance. If you like slightly off-kilter melancholy atmospheric electronic pop then they could be the ones for you.
19. Beach Baby
A promising UK four piece who met at Goldsmith’s College (following in the footsteps of Blur). They have recently released their debut single Ladybird through Chess Club, a distinctly hazy mid-fi sounding piece of rock music that channels the spirits of both the 70’s and early 90’s (if that’s possible).
20. April Towers
Alex Noble (vocals, keys), Charlie Burley (keys, guitars, samples, backing vocals) form the duo known as April Towers. They’re from Nottingham and are making predominantly electronic based pop music that recalls the likes of The Pet Shop Boys, New Order and OMD in places. If those references tick your boxes, then they’re a must see.
And there you have it - 20 acts on our 'to see' list, although the likelihood is that with line up clashes and the as yet unreleased Alt-Escape line up still be revealed, we'll probably end up only catching half of these.
20 not enough? Then why not also try these 10 more: Jack Garrett, Rebecca Clements, Ibeyi, Casi, Cosmo Sheldrake, George Maple, Shannon Saunders, Yak, Thomston, Clarence Clarity.
Who are you intending to see? What absolute 'must sees' have we missed? Let us know via Twitter or the comments section below.
7 comments:
Is that 14/20 with Female vocals? Think my top 20 is 14/20 male lead vocals. Each to there own , and thats why Great Escape is a great festival, caters for so many tastes
Well, here at Breaking More Waves we seem to have developed a preference for female vocals (which actually has changed from when Breaking More Waves was called Breaking Waves and was a paper based fanzine where we prefered the sound of male vocals) and these recommendations reflect our own personal bias, just as the blog does in its totality.
One of the good things about Great Escape (compared with many other festivals) is it has a more healthy range of acts with female musicians on the bill than many other festivals and as you say has a decent diversity of acts - something for everyone.
" these recommendations reflect our own personal bias, just as the blog does in its totality." here here and so it should.
Long live the freedom of the internet to express views, to reflect on others and respect differences.
No can I have a set of steps to get off my high horse
Is the top comment here a bit of everyday sexism creeping in?
I can't belive if BMWaves had chosen 14 male vocalists you would have raised the point.
A very fair point, I don't think it was everyday sexism, but for you to raise it then I have had to think about it, so thank you.
Your comment has made me seriously reflect would I have commented had it been a 16 male and 4 female ratio? truthfully, probably not, more importantly for me was why not?
Not because of sexism, more that a 16/4 male to female ratio would not have struck me as being unusual and thus comment-able, it would have been the norm.
The debate which is getting a rightly higher profile is is the norm correct and acceptable in todays world?
My personal taste has probably been biased by that norm. I like to think that it isn't but am not naive enough to believe that.
Provided there is equal opportunity then the market and public taste will decide.
Unfortunately from what I hear and read there are not equal opportunities. In this day and age that is neither acceptable nor sustainable
Festivals like Great Escape are leading the way in having a more equal booking policy and hopefully more will follow suit.
"Not because of sexism, more that a 16/4 male to female ratio would not have struck me as being unusual and thus comment-able, it would have been the norm."
Good point Rob - we're all products of the environment we operate in and your comment is a representation of that environment.
There's a lot of people shouting on the internet at the moment and raising the issue of gender imbalance at music festivals (and therefore equality of opportunity) but what doesn't seem to be happening to me is much beyond people shouting.
Let's hope that people who do work in the industry take notice of the shouting and consider the issues and what can be done to adddress them - it's a 'bigger picture' that needs to be considered and addressed (in the same way as the construction industry doesn't employ many women).
To be fair to Great Escape as you stated, I believe it has one of the highest % of female performers of UK festival bills - and as this is a 'new music' festival it offers hope that in thee longer term the norm will be different from what it is now.
These previews are great. Gives a good overview of what TGE has to offer. I'm psyched to go to my first on this May.
I have to give a could of shout-outs to my fellow country men and women
Vök - heavy electronic pop with saxophone. Just awesome
Junius Meyvant - Melancholic folksy guy
Sóley - really smooth and beautiful tones. Kind of folk, kind of indie pop
Low Roar - eery music, with hints of Sigur Rós
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