First acts making 'The Great Escape'

United Kingdom | | 09 March 2006

Some of Brighton's finest, British Sea Power, Brakes, and Electric Soft Parade, are among the first acts confirmed for The Great Escape, a new festival taking place in the south-coast seaside town...

The first ever Great Escape is a three-day festival taking place in various clubs across Brighton from 18-20 May.

Designed for UK and international bands aiming to jump from their domestic markets onto the world stage, more than 100 separate events will be held over the weekend.

British Sea Power, Brakes, and Electric Soft Parade will be carrying the flag for Brighton, while The Futureheads, Aqualung, The Feeling, Young Knives, The Upper Room, Martha Wainwright, The Academy Is..., and Kubb are the other UK bands already confirmed.

The new initiative is the brainchild of UK festival booker, Martin Elbourne, who told VF earlier this year: "My vision of it is for people to go along and not see a shit band all weekend. That's what I really want."

Around 50 per cent of the artists will come from outside Britain, all hoping to make it big in the lucrative UK market.

There will be a heavy emphasis on Australian and Canadian bands, with the latter batch including Blood Meridian, Holy Fuck, Immaculate Machine, Magenta Lane, Metric, Novillero, and The High Dials, all no doubt hoping to emulate the success of The Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene.

Organisers say The Great Escape will become an annual fixture in Brighton with the aiming of emulating the success of the American festival, SXSW, and The Netherlands', EuroSonic, which also act as live platforms for artists to be exported.

The festival will also feature speeches from the industry insiders, including Glastonbury's Michael Eavis. But despite its industry nature, all gigs will be open to the public with around 3,000 festival tickets released to fans.

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