The joy of The Great Escape is that it’s stuffed with amazing new artists and everyone has a different favourites or recommendations list, which means you can’t go wrong on the ground no matter where you end up.
Pussyliquor
As the festival builds though, it’s hard to avoid acute FOMO symptoms when you look at Twitter, but it’s worth keeping an eye out, as some bands perform a few times, and you can still grab an extra gig or two, when you’ve been inspired by a grainy clip of video.
With 450 up and coming artists playing everything from big beach tents to pubs, churches to glossy light up boxes, there was music for everyone. Here’s a taster of some of our favourites.
We kicked off on Wednesday night with the delegates party and an eclectic mix of bands. Finding out who was playing was next to impossible until after they had played and you actually talked to them, which made it more exciting if a little old school.
The fierce but joyful sounds of local Brighton punk band Pussyliquor and their fabulous front woman stole our hearts, and it was great to find out that they were them so to speak – we’d heard of them via Loud Women but not got to see them live before. Party-starters.
Queue ranking: 0 (delegates only)
Pale Waves
Pale Waves
With several slots across the festival Pale Waves were a must see – but on Thursday you had to navigate two queues to get there, one of them hidden inside the Vevo stage courtyard. A glossy light installation on stage gave them and their indie pop tunes a rosy glow.
Queue ranking: 11 (sneaky double queue like a theme park)
Goat Girl
Inside a packed madly hazed up arch on the seafront were Goat Girl, playing a storming set. Couldn’t see much but the lush post-punk tinged with psych and folk was perfection.
Queue ranking: 10
Amaroun
Amaroun
Loved Amaroun, great songs from the kaleidoscopic alt-pop producer and songwriter Jay Brown who opened up in between tunes to tell the audience about challenges faced, and win a whole load of new fans.
Queue ranking: 0 (hidden gem)
Idles crowd
Idles
Idles blasted out visceral hard-hitting punk tunes, bathed in wry humour, and finished their set with a giant conga, much to the bafflement of non UK visitors! Headlining the Beach Club tent, they should really have had the whole beach.
Queue ranking: 10
Lucie Barat
A taste of Alt Escape on Friday but at a venue that seemed to be the location for sound wars, with bands being cancelled, stood up again, and then being turned down mid set. During the daytime!
Lucie Barat
‘Punk poet’ Lucie Barat brought pop rock goodness, with a superb voice and stagecraft she should have been on a much bigger stage.
Queue ranking: Venue antics caused confusion
Sisteray
Sisteray
The tension of being cancelled and then finally allowed to play, upped the ante and London punk band Sisteray delivered a blistering set, including current release Algorithm Prison - our favourite song of the whole festival - backed by hard-hitting visuals. With a high-vis jacketed sound level monitor guy ready to pounce, you could cut the air with a knife. If the gig had been stopped again there would have been a crowd riot.
Queue ranking: Sneaky - get in for soundcheck and barricade the doors so you don’t get kicked out
Gaika
Gaika
Gaika made a soulless conference style venue his own with his intense and compelling set – an electronic blend of grime, dance hall, garage, hip hop and R&B and plenty of politics. His album is coming out on Warp later this year.
Queue ranking: 0 (0 for out of the way)
K-Trap
Great to see TGE booking K-Trap a powerful emerging voice of UK Drill Rap, with hard-hitting lines delivered from behind a mask.
Why The Great Escape used this venue at all for K-Trap, Gaika and a bunch of grime artists is a complete mystery, the worst venue we came across.
Queue ranking: 0
Kojey Radical and Mahalia
Kojey Radical
Back to the light box stage for a lit set from Kojey Radical with acres of crowd chat and a special guest appearance from Mahalia for new single Water.
Queue ranking: 9
Superorganism
Queue ranking: ** They should have turned the buses and taxis back. We didn’t get in.
Haiku Hands
Haiku Hands
Genius move to put this trio’s final TGE show at the end of the pier as their helter-skelter-style female vocals packed enough attitude to rocket across the Channel, and was perfect for a jump around in a packed venue. Haiku Hands were completely unknown to us until we saw a clip on twitter from an earlier gig – thanks – this Australian electro hip hop with a punk flavour was one of our favourite discoveries.
Queue ranking: 0
Sons of Kemet
Sons of Kemet
With ferocious energy the double drummer, sax and tuba, 22nd century jazz supergroup Sons of Kemet turned the packed venue into a monster sweaty thrilled dancing mess.
Queue ranking: 10
Benin City
Benin City
Our festival favourites. Benin City lit up the baroque-style Paganini ballroom and got everyone dancing from the first song, with their tales of East London nights. They showed off their own stunning moves, and were obviously having just as good a time as the crowd! Their new album ‘Last Night’ – featuring standout ‘Bus’ is is out on Moshi Moshi now.
Queue ranking: U/20? (Unknown / we got there extra early)