THE RECOMMENDER’S SHOWCASE @ THE GREAT ESCAPE

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As you can see on our About section, we pride ourselves on throwing at least one mean party every year at The Great Escape Festival. As we build up to what will be our third consecutive year in a row we’re now well known for this annual shindig. As 300 bands and the entire UK music industry descend on Brighton’s seaside for a weekend of new music, we do our best to provide a genuine highlight among the many highlights.

This year should prove to be one of the most exciting shows we’ve ever embarked on. We usually throw our parties in the after hours, but this year we wanted to be part of the opening shows on the first day, so we catch everyone at their most excited, well before the festival fatigue kicks in. We have four awesome bands being showcased at one of Brighton’s key music venues, The Green Door Store, from midday until 4pm, on Thursday afternoon.

The second you’ve registered for your wristbands and passes at the main festival hub in town, get yourselves over to our venue to catch the below bands and kick off your weekend in style. We’ve decided to really wear our home city of Brighton as a badge of honour at this year’s show, with three of the four bands on offer hailing from this city. Here’s the list of players…

ANNEKA – You can see from our coverage, (back here), that we truly believe in this talented new Brighton artist and her exceptionally beautiful vocals. With an armoury of samples and machines around her she creates a synchronized show that’s as clever as it is hypnotic.

US BABY BEAR BONES – You could call this Brighton trio quirky, or cute, but that misses the depth and intricate work that is on offer with their unique music. It’s absolutely irresistible so it’s no wonder they’ve been whipping around the key music blogs this year.

CAVE PAINTING – These guys are often talked about as Brighton’s most promising band. Their wonderful, anthemic tunes certainly pitches them as serious contenders, and we’re already seeing them adorning magazine covers and packing out shows. They’re aiming for stadiums, so come and see them in a small venue whilst you still have the chance.

RANGLEKLODS – Flying in from Copenhagen, specifically to play our showcase, Denmark’s answer to James Murphy will be one of the most exciting artists on offer at this year’s festival. We expect record label A&R’s as well as the mainstream music media in the audience for this one.

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BLOG UP & JEAH

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The Great Escape festival is an absolutely massive weekend, the biggest of the year for our music blog by a some stretch. Not only do we have The Recommender’s own official showcase at The Green Door Store on Thursday afternoon, kicking off the weekend’s music in as much style as we can muster, but we’ve set about organising plenty more exciting stuff on top of the other very, very exciting stuff. It’s all so damn exciting isn’t it!?

The festival is a major event on the music industry calendar, known not only for the 300 bands that are performing, but also for it’s networking opportunities and conferences. On Friday afternoon at the beach-fronted Life venue we throw the doors open to any music bloggers who are in Brighton, for a get together called BLOG UP, in association with Hype Machine and Music Robot – two brands doing their best to raise music bloggers profiles around the world. It’s a chance for us to share tips, swap insider stories and grab a free drink between all the bands that are on offer around town. It takes our online networking into real life, where usually for most of the year geography stops us.

It also turns into an opportunity for music PR firms, managers and record labels to directly communicate with some of the UK’s key music bloggers, something they often find rather difficult to accomplish when approaching them online. Blogs get hundreds of emails each week and if our experience is anything to go by, we tend to spend more time on the emails from people we’ve actually met in real life, so for those people working in the industry they’d do well to get their promo material into the goodie bags we’re also handing out to these bloggers.

Beyond Blog Up there’s plenty more on offer at the Life venue, as during the whole day and into the night we are helping to host a showcase of bands for an event we’re calling JEAH!. It starts at midday and runs up to 10:30pm at night showing off DJs throughout and a total of eleven artists on stage. You can see the line up below, secured by the brands we’ve joined forces with; Killing Moon, Strongrooms Alive and Euphonios. All this is a fantastic example of how things get better when people combine. Together we are undoubtedly stronger.

You can hear the rest of our tips on our next blog post, with more details about our other official showcase, but in the mean time you are can hear us tipping acts on both Juice FM (hear that below) and again on Amazing Radio on Friday lunchtime.

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