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Posted May 2nd 2013

Festival Fever is finally here!

Firstly let’s discuss the two shows we had over the last few days. Last Thursday we had Edwyn Collins at St George’s church and what a night! He absolutely blew everyone away, as well as fab support from Colorama and Bullies (Bullies is infact Edwyn’s son’s band incase you didn’t know) and they told us that it was by far their best show on the tour. The church was packed, and when Edwyn hit us with ‘Rip It Up’ everyone went mad, a handful of people got up and started dancing, and then he jumped into ‘Girl Like You’ which had everyone singing and dancing. The church has never been rocked like that. Not forgetting his new song either ‘Dilemna’ which is brilliant.

On Monday we all headed down to The Basement to see Scottish singer songwriter King Creosote. We were so amazed and taken in by his performance the crowd went silent. After playing new and older records with Andy his drummer, he ended up doing a 4 song encore much to ours and everyone’s delight. What a great weekend! Tweet us all your highlights at @MeltingVinyl!

So in just two days time, festival fever hits Brighton at one of our favourite times of the year. The sun is shining and everyone is starting to get excited about everything Brighton Festival. Here at MV we’re getting really excited for the music side of things (obviously) and have been chatting about our highlights at this year’s Great Escape Festival which has now SOLD OUT!  If you’re currently making your great escape plan and thinking OHMYGODSOMANYBANDS then don’t panic! Here’s our top 6 bands you should definitely see over The Great Escape –

Concrete Knives will be playing twice on Saturday, midday at The Queens Hotel and again at 8pm at Audio. The French band are fronted by both male and female leads, with strong and distinctive vocal style, and you’ll find in their music a flavour of the early naughties New York music scene.

Now we saw Fear Of Men last June when they supported our Best Coast show at Coalition, and they won’t disappoint this year. With their indie, Britpop sound is perfectly balanced as the band (comprised of two males and females), imagine a female Ian Dury toying with blended slightly surf guitars. They hit The Basement at 10:30 on Friday night.

The great thing about The Great Escape is that if you miss a band, there’s a big chance they’ll be popping up again over the weekend. That’s what Kinnie The Explorer will be doing. After a fab performance at our last year’s oF Montreal show in April, the experimental sub-indie group will lead you down an endless path of pure indie infiltrated by the subconscious background sound of poetic lyrics. They play The Brighthelm Centre (I know we didn’t know it either, but it’s infact on North Road) on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 1:30 everyday. Easy!

Now we could easily write a whole news piece for this next guy, so let’s try and keep it short. If you haven’t seen Luke Sital-Singh yet, then for goodness sake make sure you do at The Great Escape. There’s a reason why we have had this gifted songwriter to support The Staves, Rachel Sermanni, Wild Beasts..  The ever compelling and emotionally captivating young songwriter has his roots in an eclectic mix of songsmiths both young and old, from Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Joni Mitchell to Damien Rice. 6 Music love him, SXSW loved him, and so do we. Luke plays The Unitarian Church on Friday at 9:45, and Komedia at 3:30 (but if you want our advice, go see him at The Church. Atmosphere + acoustics + Luke = special.)

What a year this next lot have had. Being signed to Little Big and Blood & Biscuits it’d no wonder The Physics House Band are causing such a stir. They blew us away at our Roller Trio show in December (and even blew Roller Trio themselves away) we’re so pleased that they’ve been added to The Great Escape. Take the psychedelic explorers of the 60’s, prog of the 70’s, tech metal of the 80’s, 90’s post-rock, all with the 21st century precision of math-rock and that’s them. They play Concorde 2 on Saturday at 8:30.

And finally another band that’s causing quite a stir on the airwaves and The Guardian, Brighton’s experimental psych-rock outfit The Wytches play The Haunt on Friday at 9:15. You don’t want to miss these, trust us. The atmospheric ‘songs’ drag you deep into a world of musical angst and raw energy. We suggest you turn up early to catch them!

For the full list of the lineup and any other Great Escape Q’s head to their website here.

That should give you a little guidance to this year’s Great Escape, here’s to the bet one yet!