London, 28 May 2026 – Leeds-based electro-noise outfit Bathing Suits have been announced as the 2026 recipients of The Great Escape’s Steve Strange Award – an honour celebrating the next generation of groundbreaking artists and remembering the legacy of the legendary music agent Steve Strange.
Created in partnership with Steve Strange’s friends and colleagues, the award recognises emerging artists who are pushing creative boundaries and building meaningful connections with fans. The winner receives a £5,000 cash prize to use as they see fit in support of their artistic development.
Bathing Suits have rapidly built a reputation for their explosive live performances and uncompromising sound, fusing blasting electronic beats with abrasive guitars into a volatile mix of pounding beats, abrasive riffs and unrelenting energy. Emerging from Leeds’ thriving underground scene, the band’s chaotic energy and genre-blurring approach helped them become one of the most talked about acts of this year’s Great Escape, and earned them support slots and growing attention across the UK live circuit.
Bathing Suits said: “Thank you Great Escape we are pumped to receive this award. I loved swinging upside down and naked in front of all of your smiling faces. Was the perfect chance to try out loads of new material that we’ve got waiting for you, can’t wait to come back very soon Brighton!”
Rory Bett, Managing Director of MAMA Group, commented: “Bathing Suits embody the creativity and originality that the Steve Strange Award exists to champion. They are a band with an electrifying live presence, and we’re excited to support them at this important stage in their journey.”
The announcement follows the hugely successful 20th anniversary edition of The Great Escape, which took place in Brighton from 13th – 16th May 2026. This year’s festival welcomed over 20,000 attendees, including 4,000 music industry delegates, and featured 533 artists across the core festival programme alongside a further 192 performances at The Alternative Escape. Across four days, more than 700 shows took place with artists representing 69 different countries.
We attended the Bathing Suits’ Great Escape performance at the Concorde 2 on Thursday 14th May – Here’s our account:
BATHING SUITS – Concorde 2 21:15 – 21:45
Highly rated and fast-emerging electro-noise band Bathing Suits were next to take to the Concorde 2 stage. They are from Leeds and they are here to get you dancing and shaking your ass, and that’s exactly what they did. They feature Freyja Blevins (drum machine/vocals), George Dickinson (guitar), Alex Mulholland (guitar), and Elise Hughes (bass). The DIY outfit arrived on stage to great applause and got straight into the bass-heavy opening track ‘Relay’. The four-piece are quite animated throughout the set. Freyja has a large industrial fan on the floor to the side of her, cooling down her slim figure as she dances more or less on the spot, unleashing her vocals with her long bleached blonde hair swirling around and lashing against her face. The heavy techno pumping ‘I Can Be A Freak’ with its repeated song title lyrics is next. Both opening tracks feature on the band’s debut ‘KILL Bathing Suits’ EP, as do the final three tracks of their seven-song set. Sandwiched between them are two unreleased ones, ‘Want More Than Watcha Have’ and ‘Set Me Free’. For the fifth track ‘Lousy Havoc’, guitarist George Dickinson uses his half-filled pint glass as a slide, while the final track ‘Empathy’ finishes with a crescendo of noise and distortion, then comes to a sudden halt.
We also had the pleasure of catching Bathing Suits live in action last year at The Rossi Bar on 12th August – Read our account of that evening HERE.
If you missed Bathing Suits at The Great Escape, then you now have the chance to catch them in action at the Green Door Store in Brighton on Saturday 27th June as part of the ‘Everywhere At Once’ nationwide three-day grassroots music festival. The ‘Everywhere At Once’ event is taking place across the UK from 26th to 28th June 2026.
Tickets for the Bathing Suits concert at the Green Door Store are on sale now and can be purchased HERE.
You can find out more about which artists are performing live as part of the ‘Everywhere At Once’ Festival HERE.
Tickets for The Great Escape 2027 are on sale now and can be snapped up HERE.
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