The Great Escape Festival 2015
Saturday 16th May 2015
Sold Out
Gaz Coombes, Jane Weaver, Susanne Sundfør + more
At St. George's Church
Doors 7:00 pm
Price Early bird: £43.45 - £54.45
Since being founded in 2006, The Great Escape has been firmly established internationally as the leading event for showcasing new music. Taking place in Brighton over 3 days in May, The Great Escape kicks starts the festival season, introducing 15,000 music lovers to the key artists and sounds of the year. With over 350 bands playing in 30 venues over 3 days, The Great Escape is the key date in the music calendar. In addition to pre-publicised performances, impromptu street gigs spring up all over town. The Alternative Escape, numerous club nights, label parties, industry showcases, unique collaborations and outdoor gigs all add to the festivities.
2015 will be the first year that St. George’s Church will be a part of TGE. Three nights of music in a perfect atmospheric setting for a line-up of interesting creatives playing the festival.
14th May
Dralms
Dralms is the latest project by Christopher Smith and band mates Shaunn Thomas Watt (Siskiyou), Peter Carruthers (Siskiyou) and Will Kendrick (Failing).
With Dralms, Smith departs from his minimal and subdued musical constructions of his solo album’s The Beckon Call and Earning Keep, to a much more complex heavier sound. Dralms’ first release, the two song EP Crushed Pleats is a significant departure sonically as well as conceptually. “The four-piece’s songs range from slow-burning pop-rock to heavy, synth-fried psychedelia.”
Dralms debut album is due for release in the Spring of 2015 by Boompa (CAN) and Full Time Hobby (EU).
Aldous Harding
Gothic folk singer songwriter, hailing from New Zealand.
Choir of Young Believers
Danish indie band Choir Of Young Believers made their debut in 2007, with the EP “Burn The Flag”, which earned them heavy airplay and great reviews in their homeland.
Since then band has toured intensively including 3 tours in the US, performing at SXSW in both 2009 and 2010, numerous US and Uk radio performances for BBC and KCRW and a support tour for fellow Danish act MEW in UK.
The music of Choir Of Young Believers has been used in a number of US TV shows, such as Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place and Numb3ers and a couple of European feature films and two of their songs have been sampled by US hiphop artist Kid Cudi.
Susanne Sundfør
Norwegian superstar Suanne Sundfør released her self-produced and orchestrated new album ‘Ten Love Songs’ to huge UK critical acclaim, “Ten Love Songs feels like Sundfor’s international breakthrough.” MOJO****, “Don’t miss out on this, it’s a quite brilliant album.” The Guardian*****, “It’s sensational. Buy.” Sunday Times Culture, and became one of the most talked about artists of 2015 so far.
‘Ten Love Songs’ was released following collaborations with Anthony Gonzalez of M83, where Susanne co-wrote and sung the title theme to Joe Kosinski’s film ‘Oblivion’ starring Tom Cruise, and with Röyksopp who invited Susanne to collaborate on their new album ’The Inevitable End’, resulting in lead vocals on ‘Running to the Sea’ and ‘Save Me’.
15th May
English Heretic
“Andy Sharp must surely be the hardest working man in occult psychogeography. Less than a year after The Underworld Service, his monumental and mesmerising treatise on the death impulse in Western culture, we now get A Study Of Lunar Research Flights, one of the launch releases on Sharp’s new imprint Eighth Climate, “ethnographic recordings from the imaginal world”.
“Since its inception in 2003, English Heretic has developed a distinctive and evocative sound palette that draws on post-punk, prog, folk, ambient and field recordings, yet each new release reveals another facet to the project, both thematically and sonically. While the sepulchral concepts of The Underworld Service produced music that was often luxuriantly dark and oppressive, the sound of A Study Of Lunar Research Flights is comparatively spacious and luminescent, while still retaining some hard edges; a formulation that could best be summed up as Brutalist kosmische.” Joe Banks – The Quietus
Rival Consoles
‘I play many instruments and have done for many years. I started composing around 12 years old, and continue to do so now more than ever.
I’m drawn to electronic music because the patterns your hands learn as a musician sometimes dictate too much in the creating process, with electronic music you don’t have the same muscle memory. ‘
Lubomyr Melnyk
Lubomyr Melnyk is a Ukrainian pianiste extraordinare who has created an amazing new language for the piano.
Classically trained and greatly affected by the minimalist movement in the early 1970s, he has developed his own unique language for the piano, named after the principle of maintaining a continuous, unbroken stream of sound.
Lubomyr Melnyk is a true innovator, exploring new directions for contemporary music. Not only is he regarded as one of the world’s fastest concert pianists, his compositions also truly carry the listener to new realms. To witness one of his rare live performances is nothing short of a mind-opening experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoGDBRohAWk
Blanck Mass
Blanck Mass, the solo project of Benjamin John Power of electronic noise duo Fuck Buttons, recently announced Dumb Flesh – his newest solo offering, out May 11, 2015 via Sacred Bones Records.
The Fuck Buttons musician has been making music under the moniker since 2010. His self-titled debut was released on Mogwai’s Rock Action in 2011. In 2012, ‘Sundowner’ – the second track from the album – soundtracked the London Olympics Opening Ceremony. The song was chosen by Underworld’s Rick Smith and performed by London’s Symphony Orchestra to 900 million people worldwide.
16th May
Gaz Coombes
In January 2015, Gaz Coombes released his hugely critically acclaimed second solo album, “Matador”. It has been an extraordinary journey for Gaz, from Ivor Novello and Brit Award winning rock star to more recently soundtracking last summer via his cover of The Kinks “This Time Tomorrow” for John Lewis; to his current and lauded new album release. An album in the classic sense of the word, a body of work which deserves to be listened through. The sound of one of Britain’s greatest songwriters, facing the future with a flourish.
Jane Weaver
Abusing, evading and obliterating 20 years of whimsical pop trends Jane Weaver’s experience as a truly independent and resilient female experimental songwriter / sound-carrier commands respect and inspiration in equal measures. Dashing through northern pastures unsaddled and unblinkered Jane’s journey so-far, from teenage Liverpudlian shoe-gazer to conceptual-pop mistress, has seen her graze with pocket-punk, Synth-pop, acid folk, indie-schmindie, dark-ambient drones, Hollywood soundtracks and girl-group psych.
Jane’s latest album ‘The Silver Globe’ is her most complete and realised commitment to date released via her own Bird Records imprint in late 2014, garnering the instant accolade of Piccadilly Records Album Of The Year.
Soley
Sóley has been wowing audiences around the globe with her dark, fairytale song craft since 2010. After the “Theater Island” EP (2010) announced her as a solo musician, the fantastical, sepia-toned alt-pop tunes of debut full-length “We Sink” (2011) won her a massive, devoted fanbase: Often praised for her delicate take on composition, her songs’ “dream-like” qualities and “dark surrealism”, a track like “Pretty Face” has gained over 17 million YouTube views since its release. Having released a short EP entitled “Krómantík” in 2014 Sóley is now about to return with her sophomore album “Ask The Deep” in 2015.
Bill Ryder Jones
Bill Ryder-Jones left The Coral after their fifth studio album Roots & Echoes, on which his arrangements hinted at a deeper and spectacular compositional talent. Last year Ryder-Jones explored this side of his creative talent in full with the orchestral album If… for Domino sister label Double Six – which was a grand ‘imaginary soundtrack’ to Italo Calvino’s post modernist novel If On A Winters Night A Traveller.
Now Ryder-Jones has completed new album A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart, which marries his masterful capacities as arranger and composer with his first firm steps as a singer songwriter. It’s an album of capital-S songs that will more than sate the appetite of those that appreciate his knack for heart swelling melody and painterly detail.
“Think of it as Glastonbury by the sea.” NME
“Unveiling the best music from across the globe, The Great Escape is essential for discovering the hottest new talent.” The Fly
“This three day music festival and industry conference is Britain’s answer to Texas’s SXSW.” TIME OUT