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.
Continuing our tips for bands and solo artists that we recommend seeing if you’re going to this year’s Great Escape festival in Brighton on May 14th-16th. In this penultimate post we’re featuring live video footage of some of the acts we’ve selected so that you can get a real idea of their capabilities. 13. Black Honey 3 reasons why you should go and see Black Honey: 1. In lead singer Izzy they have an excellent front woman who manages to mix steely eyed ferociousness with just a hint of humour. 2. The band make a lot of noise, but they also make some damn fine songs. 3. The Great Escape is their home town show, so it should be a good one.
14. Seinabo Sey One of our Ones To Watch 2015, Sweden’s Seinabo Sey is still remarkably low profile in the UK despite an appearance on Later… with Jools Holland. An incredible vocal talent. Surely that low profile can’t remain for that much longer?
15. Laura Doggett The comments for Seinabo could also apply to Somerset’s Laura Doggett. Another powerful and gut-wrenching voice with a relatively low but building profile, helped by the inclusion of her song Old Faces on the trailer for ITV's Broadchurch. A Breaking More Waves regular - Laura is another act that we gave the first Hype Machine listing to back in 2013 with her song Heard It All Before.
16. A.O.S.O.O.N South-London male-female duo A.O.S.O.O.N aka Marisa Hylton and Manny Folorunsohave been growing support from blogs and UK radio with melodic songs that mix acoustic pop and beats that they've tagged as 'gangsta folk'. Their debut EP featured the captivating song Under which was picked up by Majestic Casual and to date has received over 4.5 million views on Youtube. They've followed it up with the equally impressive Same Difference from their Capo 3 EP.
This is the third installment of a series of posts designed to suggest a few artists that might be worth your attention if you're struggling to decide who to see amongst the hundreds playing at this year's Great Escape in Brighton. Click back through the previous two posts to see recommendations 1-8. Here's our next four: Recommendations 9. Låpsley Winner of the Blog Sound of 2015 poll, a nominee on the BBC Sound of list and one of our choices as Ones to Watch 2015 last November, Liverpool's Låpsley (real name Holly Lapsley Fletcher) has been making quite a storm over the last year and a half with her beautiful downtempo electronic music that captures the minimalism of James Blake and then twists and manipulates it into something with aspects of jazz, soul, classical, pop and ambient dance in it. Having put going to university on hold she's signed to XL records and is now pursuing a musical career to see where it takes her. With only a handful of live shows under her belt, she's on a fast learning curve, but her Understudy EP from January bodes very well for an innovative and intriguing album at some point in the future.
10. Float Fall Belguim's Float Fall captured hearts with a delicate little pop song that sounded like a cross between The Beautiful South's A Little Time, David Gray's Babylon and Coldplay's Fix You with beats back in 2013. It was called Someday and we've been waiting for them to make their way to the UK ever since. Finally 2015 is that time.
11. Broods Of New Zealand brother sister duo Broods' debut album Evergreen, last December we wrote: "Despite the album achieving number 1 in the charts in their home country and number 5 in Australia, in the UK Broods hardly made any sort of dent in the public consciousness due to a promotional campaign that appeared to focus largely on Australasia and America rather than Europe. This is a shame, because with Evergreen Broods conjured up a record of swelling atmospheric synths, polished production (from Joel Little of Lorde fame) and most importantly some excellent melodic, hooky, memorable pop songwriting that has been the soundtrack to the second half of our year."
12. Ward Thomas Ward Thomas (another sibling duo) are one of the groups that alongside Breaking More Waves favourites The Shires are being touted as responsible for an upsurge in UK based country music. If vocal harmonies, good old twangy guitars and songs that sound like they've come straight out of Nashville are your thing, then we recommend Ward Thomas for Great Escape.
Without further ado, here are the next 4 Breaking More Waves recommended acts for Great Escape 2015 in the 2nd of this 5 post series. Read about why we love Great Escape so much in our previous post as well as checking out some further recommendations. Recommendations 5-8 Brika We've featured Miami based singer Brika a number of times on the blog last year, but to date her profile in the UK is relatively low. Great Escape will be one of the first opportunities a British audience gets to hear songs from her debut album Voice Memos. For fans of sultry electronic pop with (in places) a hint of the cocktail bar to it.
Aurora Katy Perry is already a fan having tweeted that Aurora makes her heart 'a flutter' and that she's an 'angel'. The small number of songs this Norwegian singer has put on line so far have been celebrated by the blogosphere (including Breaking More Waves). The buzz is building nicely for this electronic pop singer with a voice that sounds that it could sit just as comfortably on a folk song. Katy Perry isn't wrong.
Pretty Vicious There's been a bit of a music industry scrum down for this Welsh indie rock band with the punk rock referencing name and bags of energy in their sound. A chance to see what the fuss is all about perhaps? If you like the Arctic Monkeys you'll hear a bit of resemblance with their song Cave Song.
Robyn Sherwell Last year we watched Robyn play an Alternative Escape show at the Latest Music Bar to just a small handful of people after featuring her cover of Ben Howard's The Fear on the blog. Since then things have been developing nicely for Robyn, with her Islander EP being very well received and a recent headline show at London's Lexington. This Fleetwood Mac cover has recently been doing the business on the Hype Machine charts.
If there’s one music festival that we mark on our calendar every year for certain attendance it’s Brighton’s The Great Escape. A new music fan’s delight, The Great Escape (and it’s smaller brother The Alternative Escape, which runs alongside the main event ) is an urban festival that showcases emerging artists from all over the world with over 400 up and coming bands playing in 35 venues, accessible on one wristband. It’s the festival where we first saw Adele playing in a tiny coffee house, Haim play a ridiculously sweaty club show that involved one of the band stripping down to their underwear it was so hot and along the way we’ve caught the likes of Foals, Years & Years, London Grammar and Dan from Bastille (before he had formed Bastille) play sets whilst they were still developing as artists.
So what makes Great Escape so good? Here are 5 simple reasons:
1. It’s a music fan's festival.
Other festivals are brilliant for the diverse and often rich range of entertainment and experiences they provide, from poetry to film to theatre, to fine food and drink, but Great Escape's focus is firmly on music and nothing else.
2. The imbecile factor is low.
Because of 1 above and the fact that virtually all the acts playing are relatively new, the lack of idiots in the audiences tends to be minimal. At the risk of sounding like gig snob, and generalising a little, as bands become more successful their audiences generally become more mainstream and with the mainstream comes more and more twats. You know the sort – the bloke who stands with a pint in his hand chatting to his mates all the way through a bands set, suddenly paying attention when they play ‘the hit’ shouting “I love this song,” and to record that he was there promptly takes a selfie of his stupid dumb ass face with the band behind him, recording what a 'great time' he had before continuing to chat for the rest of the song and then heading for the bar.
3. Sheer value for money.
You can buy a super early bird 3 day ticket for just £39.50. Last year that allowed us to see 42 bands full performances over the course of the event.
4. Daytime gigs.
Daytime gigs are music lovers dreams come true, mainly because you can the whole day doing what you adore doing but can normally only do in the evening. All we need from the Great Escape now is a handful of breakfast gigs (in a cafe serving coffee and croissants perhaps - that would be perfect.) Also you’ll find it’s the more committed fans who will catch the shows earlier in the day, which once again reduces the imbecile factor.
5. Number Of Shows / Choice.
Of course there are plenty of other multi-venue festival’s in the UK now, but The Great Escape is the grandaddy of them all. Now in its 10th year (we’ve been to 9 of them – having missed the first) it boasts more bands, more venues and more choice than any other. Sure, some venues, particularly those with the more well-known / buzzy acts will reach capacity and you’ll have to get there early to get in, but if you find yourself in a queue, don’t hang around too long, there’s a huge amount of other brilliant talent waiting to be devoured in other venues.
Have you got your ticket yet? Have you got as excited as we have about it all? In that case grab one now by clicking here (it usually sells out so don't delay) and enjoy the thrills and spills down by the seaside at one of the musical weekends of the year.
If you’re struggling with the idea of 400 acts and wondering which ones to take a punt on, Breaking More Waves has selected 20 which we think will be worth investing time with (programme clashes permitting). Unsurprisingly the vast majority have featured on these pages before.
We’ll be featuring 4 artists in each of the next 5 blog posts. All 4 posts will be published during the course of today, 1 post on the hour every hour between 9am and 1pm GMT.
Recommendations (Part 1)
1. Aquilo
Breaking More Waves gave them their Hype Machine debut in March 2013, in 2014 they played a daytime basement show for The Alternative Escape (which was rammed with music industry types) and now 2015 finds them on the main bill of Great Escape. Beautifully restrained but soulful keyboard based music.
2. Bully
"Indie / alternative guitar music is dead." Yawn. No it's not, it's just reached that stage where its become like folk music, a tradition, ideas handed down from generation to generation. Bully are just part of that lineage. The point is that they're one of the better and more exciting bands of that breed around right now. We introduced them to the blog just last month. Read more about them by clicking here.
3. Rag 'N' Bone Man
Big voice. Big tunes. Blues. Gospel. Soul. Rock. Hip-hop. This man does it all. One of our Ones to Watch for 2015 (here) playing in his home city. Everyone who catches him live is blown away by his incredible voice. If you haven't yet, it's about time, surely?
4. Jerry Williams
Another recent blog inductee and one of the more unknown names on the bill, 19 year old Jerry Williams hails from Breaking More Waves home city of Portsmouth and is pretty much the opposite of Rag 'N' Bone Man in terms of vocal tone; Jerry's is deliciously sweet and utterly adorable, as are her chirpy acoustic pop songs that she plays with a sense of joy and freedom. We understand that Jerry's playing more than 1 show in Brighton at the Great Escape - expect to see her somewhere on the Alt Escape bill as well.
Stay tuned for part 2 of our recommendations later today.
