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A look back at this year’s edition of the industry-defining Brighton showcase festival. |
| Photos: Hazel Blacher [Above: Bathing Suits] | Words: Lloyd Bolton |
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A couple of days on, we’re just about back to normal after this year’s edition of The Great Escape. The Brighton showcase festival, which takes over countless venues across the city, is a demanding, multi-headed beast, but if you play your cards right it can be one of the most rewarding weekends in the musical calendar. Between hosting our stage on the Thursday night, catching a handful of acts for interviews, and occasionally just sitting down for a beer and a reset amid the chaos, we managed to sample a healthy cross-section of some of the most exciting artists of the moment. |
This year’s Hard of Hearing Stage ran on Thursday night at DUST. Things kicked off with a queue around the corner as people made sure to catch MORN. A palpable buzz attended each of the Monmouth-raised group’s shows and this was fed straight back into the audience. They were followed by SLAG, who we were glad to catch again after their excellent set at last year’s Homegrown festival. The four-piece sample the best of their glammed up grunge pop fare, their set offering a Britpop sense of scale and abandon which will do well on the bigger stages on their horizon. Up next, Annie-Dog brought something slightly more introspective, but her combination of driving drum machine, intricate vocal effects and electric guitar made for its own invitation to immersion. |
Australian duo Salarymen played a tight full-band set coloured by the psychedelic tones and classic chord progressions which make their recorded output so addictively listenable. Then up next, Ribbon Skirt were absorbingly powerful. Tashiina Buswa’s echoing vocals were pitched perfectly to flood the room with haunting insistence. Beneath them, propulsive rhythm and searing distorted guitars matched the emotive drive of the lyrics. |
We had been long looking forward to Bathing Suits’ midnight set and they did not disappoint, coming through with perhaps the set of the weekend. Arriving on stage in a clatter of sample pad air horns, the energy did not let up from the moment the drum machine got pumping. Once ‘I Can Be A Freak’ kicked in, the audience were matching the energy, which hit its absolute peak on closer ‘Empathy’. Chainsaw electric guitar and thundering bass provided the drive. Over it all, Freyja Blevins was continuously watchable, headbanging furiously between sinuous dance moves and occasional clambers on the beam above the stage. After a quick changeover, Portuguese duo IBSXJAUR came on and matched the energy with their own high-powered electronica, bursts of pop melodrama continuously rippling into EDM bursts perfect for those who stayed up for their 1am set. |
By Friday, we were well and truly swept up into the madness of the festival. Between interviews with Bathing Suits and MORN (more on those later), we caught sets from PleasureInc. and Fellatio and encountered a live parrot at the Saint James Tavern (its name is ‘Coconut’). Up next were Opus Kink, who played to a crammed courtyard off Middle Street. They provided a requisite shot of energy to take into the evening with a mixture of older favourites and tunes from their long-awaited debut album ‘The Sweet Goodbye’. From there, we then caught half a set from the joyously ramshackle Lifeloose at Folklore Rooms. |
Among the highlights of the evening, PVA were a standout, commanding a packed-out Quarters. The sensuous expansiveness of new record ‘No More Like This’ translated magnificently to the live setting, pummelling rhythm from Louis Satchell guiding the audience through its emotive undulations. Another highlight came from Kiosk back at Folklore. In the few months we’ve been aware of them, the duo have evolved and refined their set continuously. Mesmerising basslines and fizzing synth whines undergirded the brilliantly deadpan lyrical delivery so that even when the drum machine went briefly awry, we were having a great time. |
| Casual Smart at Charles Street Tap |
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After hearing so much talk about Australian punk group The Gnomes all week, we caught the final few songs of their set at DUST after a short while in the queue. After all the hype, their admittedly tight take on punk-accented rock ‘n’ roll felt disappointingly pastiche, though perhaps if we’d made it down the front it might just have clicked into focus. Undeterred, we closed the night out at Pink Moon to see casual smart. After a slight delay owing to concern about the strength of the floor in the wake of a rammed ELLiS.D set, things slowly got moving again, the band filling dead time with hasty soundcheck covers of ABBA and Adele. Several shows into a busy weekend, they were in great form (once they switched back to their own tunes), the loose charm of their music perfectly suiting the living room-like setting. |
Saturday sometimes tends to be the quieter end of the festival, but a stacked bill kicking the day off kept things busy. We caught Truthpaste at Horatio’s down the end of Brighton Pier. The band’s carefully layered sound really comes to life in the breathing room of a live setting, accentuated by live drums and the snap of intricate acoustic guitar. We also managed to squeeze in a few songs from Jackson Roy, whose band setup brings his impressive songwriting to another level. Strange cello strains and the folk singalong opening one tune were particular highlights. |
Much of the afternoon was taken up with an incredibly blustery interlude on the beach interviewing Martial Arts before mixing up our Great Escape Venues Called Waterbear and missing The Slow Country (there are two and they are a ten-minute walk from each other). Our Manchester-scene fix was not entirely depleted, however, as we managed to get a good spot for Shaking Hand at the Prince Albert. Shaking Hand wring out all the potential of the three-piece setup. The harmonic-driven ‘In For a… Pound!’ was a high point and typical of their capacity to make the maximally effective use of each instrument without ever overplaying. Rounding out the festival, further highlights came from SILVERWINGKILLER, Jonique and Canned Pineapple. |
The Great Escape is always a rush of continuous overlapping shows through which to navigate at one’s own pace. However you do it, you end up with a clutch of new favourite acts and a bunch more that you swear to yourself to catch next time. Among those to make a big festival-wide impression this year were some of our relatively recent favourites like SILVERWINGKILLER, big long sun, Bathing Suits, casual smart and Tony Bontana along with much newer acts including Compost Compost Compost and August. Our musical radars thoroughly reset, we’re poised to throw ourselves into the rest of what this year holds – once our legs have recovered from the constant tramping between Brighton venues, that is. |
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