The Great Escape 2017: The Review
Last week The Skinny arrived in Brighton to experience The Great Escape Festival. A three day, multi-venue affair, TGE has a strong focus on artist discovery and showcasing new music, with bigger headline acts like Slaves and Rag’N’Bone Man also performing. This year celebrated the twelfth edition; a whopping 450+ artists playing across thirty venues with scores of accompanying daytime seminars, music industry receptions, parties and secret shows.
Located approximately an hour from London by train, Brighton couldn’t be better placed — the setting has clearly enabled the festival to cater for a truly international audience and grow to its current size. More than 3,500 music industry professionals from around the world joined more than 20,000 festival goers across the weekend.
The sheer scale of The Great Escape Festival programme is a little overwhelming, but exciting at the same time. The town centre is quite compact, with the majority of venues a ten minute walk from each other. Also in full swing during TGE and adding to the buzz around town is Brighton Festival, a month long multi-arts festival (similar to the Edinburgh Fringe) guest-directed by Kate Tempest.
Our very first artist of the weekend, and opening proceedings at the official Scottish Showcase, funded by Creative Scotland and hosted by the BBC’s Vic Galloway, is 21-year-old Emme Woods and band. With distinctive, gritty vocals the young singer is comfortable with the sizeable audience gathered, her entertaining onstage banter genuinely has people laughing out loud, although some of our international friends may have struggled with Scottish words like maw and dug (the latter referring to the sixth member of her band, her dog Bubbles). The opening slot is always difficult but it’s an accomplished, polished and triumphant performance.
We stay at the Creative Scotland showcase to see The LaFontaines, who are always outstanding live. They don’t disappoint, mixing rap and with heavy, Rage Against the Machine-influenced riffs. A quick look around the packed room and to our delight everyone is letting loose. Frontman Kerr Okan expertly commands and engages the audience and playfully mentions they’re in Brighton to secure that big record deal (their debut charted at number 10 in Scotland). It’s a masterclass in live performance.
We note with interest CMU (Complete Music Update) Insights have devoted an entire afternoon of seminars to media in music at Komedia (normally a cinema). Themes discussed include the relevance of the music review in a streaming age, with consumers now able to click-through to Spotify and hear albums in an instant and the continuing rise of the playlist, where artists sign major label deals off the back of a few million streams. The panelists discuss the impact of an increasingly digital consumer on more traditional/printed media, income streams, sponsored content and brands in music media, concluding branding is acceptable, so long as it’s upfront and transparent – it's really interesting and we could stay here all day but decide to go check out more music. We arrive just in time to see the end of grunge/surf-pop quartet The Van T’s, who’ve also assembled a good-sized audience.
One of our highlights of the day is The Skinny favourite Be Charlotte. Live BC demonstrates why she is in such high demand, with bookings pretty much everywhere (4 shows at TGE this weekend alone). 19 year-old Charlotte has a wide and versatile range, with a mid-set almost a cappella track, demonstrating in addition to skills in rapping and beat-boxing she’s an incredibly gifted singer. The set is captivating, vibrant and charming, complete with mass audience participation — a definite festival highlight.
The official Scotland party presented by Creative Scotland and Wide Days at The Old Ship Hotel on the seafront is one of the busiest parties of the festival. We meet delegates from around 20 countries, who were enjoying the hospitality including whisky tastings in an ancient smugglers cave, deep fried confectionery and haggis.
After the reception we decide to brave the torrential downpours that begin late afternoon, and go see some more bands. The live music part of the festival sold out in advance and the formation of long queues at a lot of the venues we visit confirms this. Soaking through and having arrived on a 6am flight from Glasgow, we opt instead to retire for the evening.
Over the next couple of days we attend some more seminars. Musician and journalist John Robb (The Membranes / Louder Than War) presents his popular Pop Question Time with the panel discussing artists' role in encouraging their fans to register to vote and actively engage in politics and campaigning. Other topics include the embarrassment of Brexit (the panel speculating if this could be reversed with a Labour majority) and one panelist remaining hopeful that Trump will be impeached.
Light-hearted and entertaining, Being In A Band, presented by the Featured Artist Coalition and moderated by Imogen Heap features members of Blur, Elbow, The Go! Team, Everything Everything and The Noisettes. It provides a fascinating peek behind the scenes of life on tour, relationships between band members, girlfriends, boyfriends and wider industry teams.
We discover some really cool venues too; the Help Musicians UK showcase in a cave-like alcove along the beach (The Hub) and our favourite, programmed by Manchester-based promoters Scruff of the Neck is a clothing store called Beyond Retro, with artists playing a few metres above the the cashiers with a magnificent glass ceiling skylight as a backdrop.
Macclesfield trio Cassia are brilliant, with happy Caribbean calypso sounds inspired by the likes of Bombay Bicycle Club and Vampire Weekend — definite ones to watch. Edinburgh ‘tropical-pop’ quartet Indigo Velvet play a vibrant set to a sizeable crowd, followed by one of our highlights, hook-laden Leeds quartet Marsicans. Their sing-a-long rhythmic pop-rock songs have led to Coldplay raving about them on social media and justifiably so — their set is flawless and among our favourite of the whole weekend.
We pop our head in to see Wishaw brothers Saint PHNX— the venue's absolutely packed with the duo playing their infectious electro-rock anthems. Paisley artist Shogun, who mentions several times he’s nursing a monumental hangover from the night before, manages to pull off a convincing but slightly shorter set than allocated, saving himself for his showcase later that day at Patterns.
Edinburgh singer-songwriter Callum Beattie and band play to a packed, sun-drenched BBC Music stage in Jubilee Square. It’s clear Beattie is going to be a regular feature on Radio 1 playlists in the not too distant future, with a clear knack for penning commercial, hit pop songs. We spot audience members singing along to his single Stars and later realise it’s stuck in our head. Definite one to watch.
Other live highlights include TeenCanteen, who also perform on a sunny BBC Music stage, the sun matching their music perfectly — glorious, sparkly, bright pop with a rock edge. South London singer-songwriter Raheem Bakaré packs out a sweaty Patterns show and is worth seeking out too.
One of our favourites artists, an accidental find, is YUNGBLUD from Doncaster. 19-year-old frontman Dominic Harrison has genuine stage presence and you can hear an influence from Arctic Monkeys. Their unique sound incorporates disco style, danceable beats, rap, rock, reggae and a dose of punk. The live show is the most exciting we saw, threatening to spill over into the audience throughout. Lyrically speaking its a call to arms, social commentary and speaking out for his generation. We later learn his grandfather was in T-Rex too!
Some tips (courtesy of mistakes we made): budget for an extra day of accommodation and use the time to wander around town and get a feel for where all the venues are located, plan what you’re wanting to see in advance and download The Great Escape App — it’s incredible and lists everything from conferences to showcases and incorporates a venue map. If you want to meet artists and music industry insiders we recommend you get a delegate pass and go to The Queens Hotel.
All in all, Brighton as a location and The Great Escape as a festival are among our favourite to date. We discovered Brighton is packed full of all-sorts of quirky independent shops, extra cool venues and friendly locals, making it a really vibrant and enjoyable place to visit — we sort of fell in love with this little seaside town.
Derick Mackinnon is the co-author of The Scotsman's Under The Radar column, and the manager of Indigo Velvet