Music
Preview
The Great Escape 2023: The Ticketmaster New Music Showcase
Introducing the line-up for the buzziest night of this year's Great Escape festival
The 2023 edition of The Great Escape festival is within touching distance. The UK’s premier new music showcase will see over 500 artists from around the world frequent any and every venue that Brighton has to offer between 10-13 May.
Whether you’re idly sitting on the pebbled beach, meandering through the city’s eccentric streets, or ducking into a pub to dodge a seagull dive-bombing for your vegan fish ‘n’ chips, you’ll no doubt come across some incredible new music.
But then there’s the headache of knowing which artists are going to be the next big thing and regretting not seeing them play the last small stages of their careers – with artists like Adele, Grimes, Lewis Capaldi, and Foals all having performed at The Great Escape on their route to stardom.
That’s why we’re hosting our own top picks at the Ticketmaster New Music Showcase at The Hope & Ruin on Thursday 11 May. If you’re going to the festival you’ll want to turn up early to catch them – here, then, are all tomorrow’s headliners:
Alice Low
Cardiff-born weirdo-pop-rock purveyor Alice Low challenges conventions, both with music and gender norms.
Having transitioned amidst the prejudice of her hometown, her personal change opened up a fearless creative path. She’s an avant-garde performer whose unhinged energy and candid, humorous lyricism evokes Hunky Dory-era David Bowie and even Scott Walker – getting a kick out of subverting all the expectations of her music despite the danceable hooks.
Already set to support Aldous Harding after coming off tour with fellow Welsh treasure Cate Le Bon, Alice Low is reaching for the mantle of Wales’ newest wonder.
Playing The Hope & Ruin on Thursday 11 May from 6.45pm
Brimheim
Translating as “home of the breaking waves”, Danish artist Brimheim decided on the name as an homage to her Faroe Islands origins, and it very much encapsulates her evocative blend of indie rock, trip-hop, and alt-pop.
Influenced by artists like PJ Harvey and Florence Welsh, Brimheim possesses a similar mystique that propels her haunting-yet-catchy pop choruses through a collage of anxiety and vulnerability with shimmering humour.
The young Dane has received plenty of plaudits in her home country, drawing comparisons to Phoebe Bridgers and even Björk, so expect these waves to land big when she hits Brighton.
Playing The Hope & Ruin on Thursday 11 May from 7.45pm
She’s In Parties
Keen-eyed fans of goth-rock pioneers Bauhaus will appreciate the song She’s In Parties are named after, though the Essex band’s influences draw from the softer, dreamier end of the spectrum of alternative music which the late 80s and early 90s produced.
Name-checking Cocteau Twins, Slowdive, and The Cranberries as inspirations, Dublin-born singer Katie Dillon shares an affinity with the burgeoning shoegaze scene in Ireland; the band sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Just Mustard and NewDad.
Despite only forming in 2021, the fast-rising four-piece are already primed to project their empowered, melodic dream-pop as far as they can.
Playing The Hope & Ruin on Thursday 11 May from 8.45pm
ARTEMAS
22-year old producer and multi-instrumentalist Artemas Diamondis, aka ARTEMAS, only began writing music in 2020. Inspired to learn his craft in the confines of his bedroom when lockdown restrictions were at their tightest, he honed his own 90s inspired alt-pop, taking cues from Nirvana, Sublime, Weezer, and Beck.
Self-describing his music as “a rainy day in sunshine state”, the budding star from Oxford (via South London) moulds captivating melodies with wry, bittersweet lyrics that unabashedly aims for the top of the charts.
Playing The Hope & Ruin on Thursday 11 May from 9.45pm
Amy Montgomery
A real force of nature, Amy Montgomery channels the raw vulnerability of idols Janis Joplin, Patti Smith and Alanis Morrisette in her ghostly take on alternative rock.
A traumatic event during her teenage years encouraged the Northern Irish singer-songwriter to confront her pain by writing, in turn creating songs that bravely face down her past, transforming her emotions into music that is both personally liberating and thematically universal.
Amy’s live performances are something to behold: frequently decked out in war paint and flamboyant outfits, it’s her courage and on-stage charisma that will leave you in awe.
Playing The Hope & Ruin on Thursday 11 May from 10.45pm
Mazey Haze
Though it might be the dark of night – and let’s face it, probably raining – when Mazey Haze takes to the stage on Thursday evening, the singer’s psych-tinged radiance will take you to warmer and woozier times.
The Amsterdam-based Nadine Appeldoorn just released her debut EP Back To The Start, that’ll please fans of Temples, Caroline Rose, Real Estate and the like with its 12-string bliss and echo-drenched choruses. It’s a sound that’ll feel right at home in Brighton.
Playing The Hope & Ruin on Thursday 11 May from 11.45pm
Jim E. Brown
Poet and activist Jim E. Brown has a backstory befitting his burgeoning cult status. Supposedly born the day before the 9/11 tragedy, the ‘spritely’ Manchester-based artist’s worldview has been shaped by the grit and grime of being bored, broke and British – with scatterbrain poem/song titles to prove it.
A self-declared alcoholic with a degenerative disease, Jim E. Brown’s stage persona blurs the edges of fiction and reality, sitting (and shouting) somewhere between Sleaford Mods, Jarvis Cocker, and Wesley Willis.
Seeing him in the flesh might be brilliant or baffling. Or both. But it’ll most certainly be an experience.
Playing The Hope & Ruin on Thursday 11 May from 12.45am
