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Brighton, Green Door Store, Hope and Ruin, The Great Escape

The Great Escape by Alex Hill

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Down every street in the city, venues are alive with the sound of live music and hordes of people queue outside standing around talking and smoking. It was, of course, The Great Escape. Over 450 different acts taking the stage in all the best pubs and clubs over four days.

If the weather plays nicely, there’s nothing like a Great Escape weekend. You set out with an idea of going here to see that, but then you meet someone who says you really should go there to see something else and then… Well, who knows  what happens then.

A typical Great Escape night tends to include a lot of drifting around venues in search of a band you’ve never heard but you’ve heard of. And as you’re halfway there, maybe going to the Hope & Ruin, there’s an alert on the phone app. The venue’s full. There’s a queue. Maybe you’d like to go to The Green Door Store instead.

It truly is a cross-city festival, and you may just find yourself doing that; especially during the particularly busy times if you’re intent on finding new and exciting gigs like I was. If you don’t mind the strain on your legs, and if chancing upon interesting new sounds is something that grabs your fancy, then the festival is definitely for you. You’re bound to discover many great bands you were previously unaware of.

You’re not always guaranteed to find that gig you were hoping to see. Late one night, feeling dejected due to not having the required wristband for a gig near the seafront – something the festival app neglected to tell us – myself and a few friends ended up at the Fiddlers Elbow for a curiously busy gig. We found ourselves in the company of an obnoxiously loud garage rock gig which was awfully mixed by the sound engineer and with frankly poor song writing from the band (who were, I believe, from Canada). The band just weren’t that great, but weren’t helped by long and droning instrumental parts drowning out the vocalist and… It was all too loud. We escaped, checked our timetables only to discover to our own chagrin that there weren’t any more gigs on – onto the next day.

Organisation is key to having a great Escape. A friend had an Excel sheet – really, an Excel sheet. All times and places and descriptions. I didn’t have an Excel sheet. I had a friend who said we had to go to Jubilee Square to see hot local band Slag. We got there to find that hot local band Slag were playing Jubilee Square. Or rather, had played Jubilee Square. Yesterday. Instead, we saw Azamiah, a smooth, laid-back jazz funk band. Good, but not as nature intended. Next year, Excel.

The Hope and Ruin was religiously hosting gigs, in both the upstairs and downstairs bar and I saw a lot of good bands here I’d never heard of before. No complaint from me. That’s the other thing about The Great Escape. You get to see loads of bands and very possibly you were told who they were and very probably you really remembered who they were and… who were they?

The bands at the Hope where all punk and hardcore; screaming the house down and getting the audience fired up. With each band delivering half an hour sets, I think I saw four or five different bands here – Pleasure Inc.from Norwich played funky headbangers with a Rage Against the Machine type feel; Jools were an intense, dual vocalist modern hardcore band; Really Big Really Clever were a midwestern emo sounding four piece who made the crowd go wild. The Molotov’s were also playing, but they were stuck upstairs.

In Green Door, where the uneven cobbled flooring tends to make your night a bit more like you’ve had a drink when you’ve drank enough to make you unsteady, various great bands played as part of both the Alternative Escape and the main festival. With so many gigs on in such a short time frame, it’s quite hard to plan where to go; especially with so many overlapping time slots – navigating the festival effectively requires incredible foresight I seemed to lack as a first timer. Next year, Excel.

My feet were complaining, my head also a little, but had a fantastic time and saw loads of great bands I otherwise wouldn’t have had the chance to see. It’s probably been said before, but if the weather plays nicely, there’s nothing like a Great Escape weekend.  

Call My Franco, Green Door Store, Nel Blu, The Wrong Trousers

Music Review: Flavours, Nel Blu, The Wrong Trousers & Call Me Franco

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By Alex Hill

Friday night was a busy one down at The Green Door. Nestled underneath Brighton train station lies the tiny, cobbled floor venue which always seems to be absolutely packed. The hoards of people on the night were justified by the lineup of four fantastic bands.

The first to take the stage was Nel Blu, the grungy looking five-piece delivered a barrage of classic 2000’s indie sounding songs with a math rock twist with the keyboard and gentle, melodic guitar breaks. Fighting through the crows to see what they looked like, Nel Blu’s jangly indie bangers sounded exactly as I imagined they looked. Even if you’re staring at the back of someone’s head, you can tell these guys are a talented bunch, with songs sounding similar to massively popular indie bands like The Killers which easily got the whole room bopping along.     

As I finally managed to secure a view, The Wrong Trousers – a high energy, heavy punk band – hit the stage, and took it by storm . I loved these guys and their hardcore sound, the very fast drumming, wrist-achingly fast guitar and screeching vocals from their attitude fuelled frontman who bounced around the stage made a headbanging result. It’s refreshing to see a band which are keeping the punk sound alive while also combining it with some surf or shoegazey guitar parts to keep it interesting and put a modern spin on the genre.

Call Me Franco are, right now, perhaps the most original band in Brighton, and their set left me utterly impressed. The trio has no singer, instead opting for strange sound effects and voices – which sound like aliens attempting to make contact – acting as an introduction to their songs. With the guitarist and bassist using a range of effects pedals to create a unique result which they use to their advantage when alternating between heavy riffs and isolated instruments, using a lot of noise – or lack thereof – to their advantage.

Complimenting the rest of the band is the extremely talented drummer whose hard-hitting technique and rhythm drove the songs. Call Me Franco demonstrates clearly how a singer isn’t at all necessary in their arty rock style. The band that came to mind as a comparison is Muse, with their similar effects driven heavy rock, and yet at no point in the show did I feel vocals were missing or needed. Their unique sound kept us enthralled. A very cool instrumental band which you don’t see the likes of very often.

Following on from Call Me Franco were headliners Flavours, a four-piece modern sounding rock group championing the release of new single, the aptly named ‘Still Heavy’. With the two guitarists playing a mix of heavy riffs and very cool sounding melodies on their twin guitars while trading vocals, followed along closely by the bassist and backed perfectly by the drums; these guys solidly pay tribute to classic psychedelic rock, while making it their own with their atmospheric sound. They saved their new single until later in the set, delivering on the anticipation with a great tune which starts off with a jangly, soothing guitar intro and melodic singing before going into a brilliant guitar solo and heavy riff, which live up to the songs name and was a treat to experience live. If you want to see a current band exerting heaps of high-energy talent; these guys won’t fall short.