Despite advice from some great escape veterans to stay in one place on Friday night, we braved venue hopping and were lucky to get in everywhere just in time.
Our day started with native Canadian artist Aysanabee who packed out the Green Door Store with his profound lyrics and soulful guitar.
While his passion for music started decades ago, Aysanabee has only recently appeared on the circuit – already winning top Canadian music awards for his hits.
There was something wholesome about his music, each song drawing inspiration from his personal experiences and sharing these with us in the rustic venue.
Scottish rockers Shambolics followed, taking on the Brighthelm Centre as part of the nation’s showcase at the festival.
Before the music, though, there is a lot to be said about some of the spaces this festival finds itself in – with a church altar still in place while the scots riffed on stage.
There was no time for breaks with Shambolics keeping up the pace throughout – guitarist Darren Ford explains. “We don’t talk on stage because we’ve got really s**t accents”, he said.
With two gigs under our belt in less than an hour, the joy of The Great Escape is clear to see. On the way to the next venue, Patterns, just under a mile’s walk away, we bought a bottle of water for less than one pound. Unheard of at almost any other festival.
Upstairs at Patterns is a very nice place to be. Even more so when German jazz-hip-hop band Ferge x Fisherman are playing. Daylight was streaming in from the windows around the stage as haze filled the room.
The audience was noticeably different in here to the rest of the festival. Young, hipster 20, 30-somethings showing off their trimmed moustaches, ear piercings and colourful baggy trousers. A sign we must be in the right place.
Frontman Fritz Fisherman effortlessly crafted rhymes to go along with the multi-instrumental band behind him, using synthesizers, electric violins, drums, you name it.
Fisherman kept the beats at a comfortable pace – a welcome respite from the earlier Scottish angst.
It was hard to go back outside into the bustle of Marine Parade, but not for long as the enchanting Nusantara Beat were playing just downstairs in Patterns’ basement.
The beret-wearing group wowed us with their instrumentals which appeared to go on forever, taking hints from 20th century Indonesian folk music – the temperature in the room was also reminiscent of that region.
We only managed to catch the last ten minutes of their set, but this was plenty of time to get a taste of their trance-like tunes and hypnotic harmonies. A must-watch if they return to Brighton.
After recovering from the extremely bright sunlight coming out of the basement, we walked to the dedicated festival site on the beach to soak up the atmosphere.
It really is a perfect space with great views of the seafront and soundtracks to match. Inside the main Deep End tent, Nottingham three-piece Girlband! did what it said on the tin.
Their anti-establishment songs were surprisingly predictable, though, introducing their song 21st Century Suffragete with the words “f**k the system.”
We are yet to find out what system this might be.
Meanwhile, aggressive rock band Dead Air took to the Pirate Studios Stage – encapsulating everything rock music should be.
The air was certainly not dead around their stage, though, with the speakers working overtime for the powerful riffs, drums and vocals.
It was fair to say the crowd on the pebbles loved it too – even for a daytime set.
After more than 13,000 steps and more than five artists before the end of the work day – we retired for a few hours to collect our thoughts and gear up for the evening.
Crowds were building throughout the day as delegates and music fans alike arrived in the city for the final two days of the festival.
We walked straight in to The Green Door Store where we saw Emmeline, a rapper and rising star by all accounts.
The cosy, cobbled Victorian railway yard contrasted beautifully with Emmeline’s unique sound.
A slam poetry champion, the 23-year-old has a way with words. Her insightful, sometimes chant-like lyrics paired with garage beats were hypnotic; the chemistry she and her DJ had was a joy to behold.
She played an unreleased track for the first time ever and thanked the dancing crowd, saying that the gig was the perfect place for its debut.
Then we made our way to the beach venue for Pip Blom, a Dutch band and returners to great escape for their fourth time.
In the spirit of the festival, they played only new songs, which might have irritated fans but was great for us.
The genre-bending trio, fronted by the band’s namesake and lead vocalist Pip Blom, blend catchy melodies and guitar riffs for a recognisable indie sound but bring something new with their rhythmic beats.
We then trekked back into town in the hopes of seeing Kneecap at Chalk. As we turned the corner into Pool Passage, though, we thought about giving up. It was ten minutes until the gig started and the queue snaked all the way back to Grand Junction Road.
In the delegate queue we got in with a couple of minutes to spare – though we can’t attest to whether people without such privileges got in at all. It’s a definite downside of the festival, but then again we did ignore the advice.
For those who did wait, it was certainly worth it.
The Great Escape is a festival of new music, and while we have seen a bunch of great acts, sometimes there is a sense of more to be done. But Irish hiphop trio Kneecap are the finished product.
The Belfast boys are proud republicans and do not shy away from topics that can be uncomfortable. They pulled out of the festival SXSW this summer because it is sponsored by the American army, and in their gig they shared their support of Palestine, chanting “free free, Palestine.”
The Great Escape has been under the shadow of a boycott after artists urged it to cut ties with sponsor Barclays which invests in companies which supply weaponry to Israel amid the ongoing conflict with Hamas.
In an interview with the Irish News, Kneecap’s Móglaí Bap, real name Naoise Ó Cairealláin, said: “It’s easy for middle class people with a steady nine-to-five income to write online that we should be boycotting stuff. But this is our work.”
Our night finished with a late-night set from something a bit different from the rest of the festival – and it was clear word had got out about this.
Dubliners Yard packed out the Komedia Studio at quarter past one in the morning – so much so the doors were shut and we had to queue for around ten minutes to get in.
We missed them at the more sociable time of 4pm on Tuesday but the festival could not finish without seeing them.
The lights went down and were replaced with a thumping bassline, the sort that made little ripples in your drink – or in this case the fixtures on the ceiling to start vibrating.
Yard describe their style as “electro noise”, somewhere between techno and heavy metal. It takes a while to acclimatise, especially after seeing so many melodic bands over the last three days.
In their presence, you see – and feel – them painstakingly crafting every note and sound with their bare hands, wrestling with different sockets, switches, strings, or even their voices.
The venue was transformed into this factory of raw, unadulterated noise which kept us all at the mercy of the sound – collectively banging our heads in synchronicity.
Bring on the last day.
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