Five must see acts at biggest ever Great Escape

Band of Skulls
Concorde 2, Madeira Drive, Brighton, Friday, May 20

IT MAY not feel like it to outsiders, but Band of Skulls have been away.

Despite it being just two years since release of their third record Himalayan, those 24 months have been a chasm of exploration and reinvention for the Southampton-based rock trio.

Having been on the road non-stop for five years, guitarist and vocalist Russell Marsden says the band felt it time for a little bit of reflection.

“We had to stop, we had toured far and wide and just did not want to overdo it,” says Russell. “You do not want to show up and be doing the same things time and time again.

“We are really happy to have come back and really interested in what we are going to do next.

“You can have too much of a good thing and we just wanted to give it enough time and not undersell ourselves. We are not just a touring band, we still want to be making relevant albums.”

Bringing their tour juggernaut off the road, the trio ended up retiring themselves to a church in their hometown where they worked on rediscovering their own sound.

As they worked, Russell says it felt like producing a debut album again – producing more than one hundred new tracks in a non-stop storm of songwriting.

“The whole church thing started out with us wanting some inspiration,” he says. “We wanted to get away from everything, go somewhere unique. There was this church which was not really utilised in Southampton so we thought ‘lets just pop in’.

“We moved in with the smallest drumkit, the crappiest amps and just pointed it all at the celling and started writing.”

He goes on: “Before you make your first record you have hundreds of ideas and pick the best 12, we wanted that luxury again and really asked ourselves what is the best we can do. It was really interesting going to back to writing that way.

“We all write so bring all our ideas together and there are moments when something special happens.

“We always have a recorder running so you end up with thousands of minutes of all this music.”

Some of the recordings capturing the raw reverb the church, made on the band’s mobile phones, even ended up making their way onto the record, titled By Default, when they officially started recording at Rockfield Studios in Wales.

Their performance at Concorde 2 at the Great Escape will be in some ways their fourth records coming out party, returning to the city-wide festival for the first time since 2010 after the release of their debut Baby Darling Doll Face Honey.

The band performed at the now closed Hector’s House pub and Russell recalls “there's more people outside watching the gig than inside, it really gave us a boost”.

The Great Escape will be their last UK gig before By Default is released on May 27.

Exciting they are back on the road after their brief break, Russell says: “We are much more balanced when we are on tour.

“When we are writing no-one can live with us, it is like living with mad people."

Ouzo Bazooka
Latest Music Bar, Manchester Street, Friday, May 20

OUZO Bazooka has blasted onto the scene with their brand of rock with a desert twang.

The Israeli four-piece represent a supreme mix of eastern and western styles with psychedelic surf music which twists like a dancer in an oasis.

Fronted by Uri Brauner Kinrot, known for his work with Boom Pam, the band is a mesh of generations as well as geographical sound.

Forming the band with long-term friend and bass player Adam Schefflan, they are joined by younger artists drummer Ira Raviv and keyboard player Dani Ever HaDani.

Uri is the band’s helmsman and chief songwriter.

Having just released their second album SIMOOM, their sound is starting to make waves across Europe.

Hailing from Tel Avi, the band are closely wired into their home city.

“You have all kinds of music in the city,” says Uri. “I live in Jaffa, the old party of the city near the beach, and the place is a big influence.

“It has always been a city of immigrants with a big mix of cultures. You have Jewish immigrants from all over Europe, people from the Arab countries, and then recently lots of refugees.

“I do not want to talk to politics, but I like it this way. It is not just the music, it is everything, and the fact the city is so small.

“I think being surrounded by people from all over the world, listening to all this music coming out the radio in all these languages it makes a difference.”

Uri first picked up the guitar when he was ten years old but did not find his calling as a musician until teenage years – saying he was intially more interested in “surfing and skateboarding”.

But come high-school Uri was hooked, saying he initially took influence from Western rock before being introduced to more Middle Eastern sounds.

On touring again, Uri says “Selling records is nice but it is all about playing live music.

“That is the goal, communicating and contributing to people’s lives.”

Ciaran Lavery
Spiegeltent, Old Steine, May 20, and Patterns, Marine Parade, May 21

CIARAN Lavery is doing The Great Escape double as he returns after a successful outing last year.

The Irish singer-songwriter, who produces a mixture of acoustic folk and hip hop, says: “You are able to just dip into different places and hear so much new music, and even if I didn’t want to, Brighton itself is interesting enough.

“Just heading down the Lanes or popping into Snooper’s Paradise, that is such is an amazing place. It is also perfect for me at this point to playing with so many great names.”

One of things Ciaran picks is the city’s size, remarking he was enchanted by the fact you can wander across it on foot.

His appreciation of Brighton and Hove’s modest size is perhaps linked to his own hometown, the tiny village of Aghagallon which has less than 1,000 residents.

Growing up there, Ciaran did try his hand at moving to Belfast but instead opted to head back to the sleepy parish.

“Generally people have to contact me on the house phone because I never have phone signal – which is really old school,” he says. “There is lots of solitude involved in that as well and I am able to create music, base myself here and go back into a bubble after playing shows or touring.”

He goes on, “It is perfect for writing because it is so quiet, so slow-paced and I know everyone here and everyone knows me. They do not know me as a musician; they just know me as the ‘wee boy up the road’ who used to play football. It keeps me grounded.”

But as he writes in the comfort of home, he is now on the cusp of releasing his second record Let Bad In after racking up 36 million plays on Spotify.

“I was writing songs which had not been pieced together until I saw this home video my uncle found of the family in Blackpool in 1993,” he says. 

“I ripped some of the audio from it and it somehow made sense to look at the songs with the home video as a narrative.

“Looking back at the seen-year-old version of myself and not being able to relate that person anymore. I think that was the whole general theme of the album. I did not realise until I saw this video.”

The Hunna
Brighthelm, North Road, Brighton, Saturday, May 21

SINCE dropping their first debut single Bonfire, The Hunna have been making waves in the indie world.

Exploding onto the scene in October, the band have fast ignited a massive fanbase and seen each release soar up internet charts around the world.

By the beginning of 2016 they had already earned themselves a headline tour and have won themselves fans such as DJs Zane Lowe, Annie Mac and Huw Stephens.

With a headline show at Patterns in Brighton in June, the rollercoaster ride of the Hertfordshire-based four-piece seems to only just have got started.

“Every day there is something new going on, but this is what we wanted and what we have been working hard to get to, so we are just trying to enjoy it,” says frontman Ryan Potter.

Before The Hunna went public in October the band had spent a year and a half working on material before getting ready to drop their debut single.

“Since then it has just been crazy,” says Ryan. “We went out on our first tour ever with Coasts and since then we our headline tour, which was incredible.

“Things just seem to be rolling and it has been amazing.”

Already the band are starting to get recognised in the street by fans, something which Ryan says “takes some getting used to”. 

“It is nice. The first time it happened was in Brighton, actually,” he says. 

“The ‘pinch yourself’ moments are kind of happening every day at the minute.

“When you have a bit of time off, like we have a week off before the tour, and you get a moment to reflect on all that has happened and it is incredible – it is a weird feeling.

“When we were are our tour, our first trip to Europe, and the way the fans sing the songs back is just amazing.” 

The band managed to sell out every night of their headline tour, but Ryan says they have already learned a few rockstar lessons.

“Before this we had never done anything like so we are still learning what not to do,” Ryan says. “The biggest lesson to choosing when not to party, obviously party, but do not go too hard. The tiredness levels are not good.”

Anna of the North
Horatios, May 19, Patterns, May 20, The Arch, May 21​

UP until three months before her debut song Sway was released online, Anna of the North had no intention of a career in music.

But it was a fateful meeting with the other half of the band Brady Daniell-Smith, better known by his producer moniker Little Dreamer, which set the pair on a journey of ethereal Scandinavian synth pop.

The Norwegian singer met the New Zealand-born producer in a bar in Melbourne, Australia, and a musical partnership was formed.

“None of her friends even knew she did music,” says Brady. “But after a few beers she decided to get her guitar and I just really liked her voice.

“We kept in touch over Skype when she went back to Norway and then one day I made Sway and I just thought her voice would suit.”

The pair produced the track in a fashion perfect for the social media generation, with Brady working in Oz while the world over Anna recorded the vocal in Norway.

After the song was meshed together Brady uploaded it to music sharing website Soundcloud under the name Anna of the North.
Immediately the track exploded in popularity.

“Literally overnight it went crazy,” says Brady. “I used to get excited after a few thousand listens after a weeks but it had like ten thousand in a day.”
Becoming an internet sensation in 2014, Brady then took the decision to pack up his life and move to Norway.

The producer was “basically homeless” at the time – having quit his career as an insurance broker to take a stab at a music career.

He had to give it a year to see if he could get off the ground and said three months into his sabbatical was the meeting with Anna.

Speaking about the dynamic between the pair, Brady says “she tames me a bit and we push each to find a nice medium”.