Yesterday, the hottest names in new music treated sun-kissed festival goers to a day of unforgettable performances throughout the city of Brighton, packing out venues as The Great Escape 2023 returned for its first day of music having just announced a sold-out event for this year.
Thursday’s highlights included one of the weekend’s most hyped artists, The Last Dinner Party, with a queue around the block for the buzzy indie band’s show at Chalk. Meanwhile, Blondshell showed why she is considered one of the industry’s most exciting artists following the release of her explosive EP on Partisan Records with a spellbinding show at Komedia.
Transgressive Records’ stage at The Old Market provided an enticing feast for the ears as HotWax gave an achingly slick performance which proved to be one of the day’s top shows to attend with even the ultimate scene queen Courtney Love spotted amongst the baying crowds. Earlier in the day, South Africa’s finest, Moonchild Sannelly, took to the stage to provide her unique brand of electro-pop-ghetto-funk, as well as the enchanting indie stylings of the ever-popular Marika Hackman.
Elsewhere, Scotland’s indie songsmith Katie Gregson-MacLeod delivered her dreamy ballads to a packed Horatio’s Bar on Brighton’s famous pier, whilst breakout TikTok superstar SEB raised the roof of the Green Door Store with his indie stylings, injected with Frank Ocean-esque vocals. At Patterns, South-East London breakout rap star ENNY brought the energy with her truth-talking soulful lyricism.
Coach Party surfed through a fiery set overlooking the crashing waves of Brighton beach at the Music Venue Trust stage, whilst the charming singer songwriter Willie J Healey treated the Komedia crowd to his brand of pop-infected rock ‘n’ roll as London’s tireless indie rockers The Big Moon enchanted Chalk’s audience with their anthemic choruses and uplifting energy.
The second day of the conference saw the focus turn to the Music + Deals content strand, with conference programmers CMU and the day’s panellists reviewing how deals are done in the music business today. At the start of the day the focus was on climate, with two of the UK’s leaders, Earth Percent and Music Declares Emergency discussing how far the UK music industry has come in enacting change and preparing for the challenges ahead, with Cathy Runciman, Earth Percent’s Executive Director saying: “I have confidence in music’s capacity to decarbonise at a reasonable rate, but what isn’t being realised is what music’s assets are that could help decarbonise the planet…It may be a grassroots movement rather than a top-down structure that changes things, because the power structures in music are quite old.”
Two of the day’s conference’s keynotes started with Promoter and Afro Nation co-founder SMADE, telling the story of the Afro Nation festival’s global expansion and his work promoting and supporting the afrobeats genre, saying: “I’ve built my network from a very early stage, and part of that is meeting artists while they are at a very early stage. I’ve picked up artists and creatives who have a similar vision to grow…and we continue to ride on that vision and break the culture.” SMADE’s keynote was followed by Ticketmaster’s EVP David Marcus discussing the latest trends, innovations and opportunities in the live music and ticketing sector.
Spanning the realms of digital innovation, AI, sync, samples and more, The Great Escape conference covered the ups and downs of an ever-evolving industry. Combined with a stellar musical offering, The Great Escape is off to a flying start and continues with more unmissable new music, must-see acts and thought-provoking conference strands today, Friday 12 May, and Saturday 13 May 2023.
The Brighton & Hove News full report of The Great Escape will follow after the event with many reviews and photos….watch this space!
