The Great Escape 2015

Please note: Info provided by the Event Organiser

The Great Escape has announced it's dates for 2015 and the tenth year of the festival will take place on 14th - 16th May.

The Great Escape presents the UK’s leading music business convention, bringing together thousands of music industry practitioners for three days of insight sessions, panels, conversations, networking and parties every May, in Brighton.

With its hub in the Brighton Dome complex, the convention runs alongside The Great Escape showcase festival, Europe’s leading festival for new music, which presents 400 artists from all over the world in 35 venues across the city.

Please visit greatescapefestival.com/ for more information.

Featuring

Alabama Shakes

From Athens, AL, four-piece Brittany Howard, Heath Fogg, Zac Cockrell and Steve Johnson were previously known as The Shakes.

See Alabama Shakes tour dates

Skepta

North London MC, producer, DJ and runner of the 'Boy Better Know' grime label. As a rapper and MC, Skepta aims to make grime music for the masses! A veteran of the U.K. grime scene, MC, producer, and record-label owner Skepta was influential in the genre's shift from the underground to the pop charts, as well as its creative and commercial resurgence during the mid-2010s. Born Joseph Junior Adenuga to Nigerian parents, Skepta moved to Tottenham with his family at the age of three. Inspired by both US and UK hip-hop, he started his music career appearing on the pirate radio circuit and performing at various MC battles. In 2005, he formed the grime label Boy Better Know with brother J.M.E. and Wiley, and a year later joined East London collective Roll Deep, although he left the following year to concentrate on Boy Better Know and his solo career.

See Skepta tour dates

JME

A founding member of Boy Better Know along with Skepta, JME has built up his own record label and T-Shirt brand. Wiley helped launch Boy Better Know and has featured on the singles 'Too Many Men' and JME's solo track 'Side Tracked'.

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Kae Tempest

Kae Tempest is a published playwright, poet and recording artist. Their playwriting credits include Wasted (Paines Plough) Brand New Ancients (BAC) and Glasshouse (Cardboard Citizens). They have written poetry for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Barnado’s, Channel 4 and the BBC. They have worked with Amnesty International to create a schools pack helping secondary school children write their own protest songs. Kae is a two times slam winner at the prestigious Nu-Yorican poetry cafe in New York and they have played all the major UK and European music festivals either solo or with their band Sound Of Rum. Their poetry book/CD/DVD package Everything Speaks In Its Own Way was published on their own imprint Zingaro in 2012. Kae's 2014 debut album Everybody Down became a Barclaycard Mercury Music Prize nominee. Each track on the album correlated with a chapter in their debut novel, The Bricks That Built The Houses, while the follow-up, 2016's 'Let Them Eat Chaos' entered the UK Top 30. 2019's 3rd album, The Book of Traps and Lessons, continues their rise to both critical and commercial success.

See Kae Tempest tour dates

Dry the River

A five-piece band with all the hallmarks of folk: elemental name, beards, acoustic guitars, even a violinist, but with a background in hardcore and post-punk bands, hence the tattoos, lyrics that read like a Steinbeck novel and a sonic palette that sweeps from gentle to giant like an incoming storm. Signed to Transgressive Records (Foals, Mystery Jets, Pulled Apart By Horses etc).

See Dry the River tour dates

18+

Existing somewhere between museums, nightclubs and the internet, 18+ creates music and visuals made from their own productions and appropriated material. Instinctive, inclusive and expansive, 18+ absorbs content from people, companies and avatars, redistributing the work into their own, regardless of the platform. The band – ‘Boy’ and ‘Sis’ – has bewitched its audience; sonics which are at once over-bearing and subtle, the delicate voice of Sis spitting sweet nothings over f***ed-up beats and hooks which hack their way into your subconscious and never leave. Their mixtapes to date have existed in the dark underbelly of the world wide web, with debut single ‘Crow’ selling out of physical copies in record time.

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AKDK

AK/DK are Graham Sowerby and Ed Chivers. They both play drums and synths. The shows include improvisations; ranging from the chaotic to the beautiful. Their mix of abstract electronics and raucous energy has already earned them support slots with artists as diverse as Fujiya & Miyagi and Three Trapped Tigers.

See AKDK tour dates