Our complete guide to the most essential shows at the festival this weekend.

This week, The Great Escape returns to Brighton. Oriented around showcasing a mixture of the most exciting up-and-coming artists and some relatively more established names pushing towards bigger things, the festival is the industry’s one-stop shop for discovering artists who will define the coming months and years. The Great Escape sprawls across countless stages around Brighton, official bookings and officially sanctioned unofficial ‘Alt Escape’ shows forming the core of the experience while additional unaffiliated bills fill any and every remaining stage the city has going. Delegates also have the opportunity to attend panel discussions, networking events and the like (a whisky tasting in the basement of The Old Ship Hotel is a regular highlight) but for dedicated fans there is plenty of live music to pack your day. From the early hours of the afternoon through well beyond midnight, there are rapid-fire sets from some of the most exciting artists out there right now. As we look ahead to our weekend at the festival, where we will be hosting our own stage on Thursday in collaboration with the Old Blue Last, here is our day-by-day runthrough attempting to draw your attention to as many key acts as possible.

Wednesday

The opening of the festival has tended to make for a relatively lowkey curtain raiser in previous years, but this year there has been a conscious effort to give people more reason to get down early. As such, the night is centred on a headline slot from polka dotted microtonal sensations Angine De Poitrine. Having made a huge impression with their recent KEXP session, you can expect a great live show as they mark their first run of UK shows. They perform at The Beach at 9.30pm following openers Ribbon Skirt, who we will be also be welcoming to our stage on the Thursday. Also worth keeping an eye out for are Brighton’s own AtticOmatic (Komedia, 6.30pm), the shoegazey electronica of Sunnbrella (The Prince Albert, 6.15pm), Pollyfromthedirt’s poignant and essential unpacking of modern British identity, on at Green Door Store at 8.15pm, heart-wrenching New Zealand singer-songwriter Hemi Hemingway (Patterns, 9.15pm) and The Itch (Patterns, 10.15pm), whose dancefloor-focused take on new wave packed out venues at last year’s festival. And as is the rule at the festival, if you can’t catch a particular show, chances are the artist will be playing another over the rest of the weekend. While you can never hope to catch everything you’d want to see, if you have a few key acts you absolutely must catch, there should be ways to make it happen.

Thursday

Here’s where things start to get complicated. With over four hundred bands, mostly playing between Thursday and Saturday, things get really rather busy out there. Kicking things off, you’ve got another chance to catch Hemi Hemingway at Patterns at 1.15pm, or you can see Oslo Twins at the same time at Green Door Store. Welsh DIY indie favourites casual smart are on at Charles Street Tap at 2.30pm, while Icelandic psych rockers Spacestation, who lit up our stage at last year’s festival, are playing at Waterbear at 3.30pm. You can also catch HoH Stage alumni 1000 Rabbits playing at Concorde 2 at 5.35pm. Sometimes it helps working around a specific venue or area, requiring minimal time to dash between venues. Patterns and Komedia operate across two stages so have an almost continuous stream of acts all weekend, while Charles Street Tap looks to have reliably good bookings across each day. If you’re looking to maximise energy levels across the four days, finding a good lineup in one place is a good way to do it. Our own Thursday evening stage at DUST puts us right at the heart of things, and if you can’t get in to any act there you can head next door to CHALK.

Our own stage at DUST kicks off at 7.15pm with South Wales’ precocious indie rockers MORN. They are followed by Brighton’s own glam-tinged punks SLAG (8.15pm), alt-pop newcomer Annie-Dog (9.15pm), Australian disco-psych duo Salarymen (10.15pm) and the aforementioned Ribbon Skirt (11.15pm). We’re then really excited to play host to a midnight set from Leeds’ innovative indie hyperpop group Bathing Suits, before Portuguese electronic pop duo IBSXJAUR take over at 1.15am. If you’re making time to pop elsewhere that evening, there are a host of shows which will be worth your time. Next door at CHALK, fast-rising slacker quartet Little Grandad are on at 7.15pm, while Westside Cowboy follow at 9.15pm. Fresh off the release of their enchanting new album ‘love songs and spiritual recollections’, Big Long Sun play Concorde 2 at 7.15pm. For something a little more understated, Natalie Wildgoose is at Unitarian Church at 8.15pm, while some livelier options come in the form of welcome returners Walt Disco (Waterbear, 8.15pm), Lime Garden (TGE Beach, 9pm) and Chinese American Bear (Prince Albert, 9.15pm). Unofficial highlights include Fiddlers Elbow sets from The Slow Country and Lttl Mort. Then, keeping things going into the night, along with our own offerings, there are sets from Blue Bendy (Horatio’s, 10.15pm), cowboyy (Patterns, 11.15pm), The Orielles (Charles Street Tap, 11.15pm) and PISS (Green Door Store, 11.15pm), but trust us, you’ll want to be there in time for Bathing Suits at 12.15am.

Friday

Friday continues in similar fashion. Once you’ve worked through the morning’s hung-over fatigue and perhaps treated yourself to something fried and revitalising, the cogs start turning again. Kicking things off very early are Stoke punk innovators Formal Sppeedwear, who are on at Alphabet at 11am. A little later, we’ll be looking to catch Adult DVD at Komedia (1.30pm) before Dutch art pop experimentalists Fellatio playat Charles Street Tap (2.15pm). There is, however, also another chance to catch Walt Disco, this time at 2.30pm at the Brighthelm. If you find time between these sets, it will also be well worth checking out an unofficial day party at Republic of Music that afternoon, which features sets across the afternoon from the likes of PleasureInc., The Orielles, The Slow Country and Opus Kink. There are also some key Alt Escape sets that afternoon from La Securité (Bella Union, 3pm), Enjoyable Listens (The Grand Central, 3.30pm), Sarah Meth (Folklore Rooms, 3.30pm) and Paper Hats (Folklore Rooms, 4.30pm).

Friday evening is a pretty thorough rundown of some of the most important acts who have emerged in the UK in the past few years. The Orchestra (For Now) are on at Quarters at 7.15pm, clashing with Speedy Wunderground garage rockers Hot Face at Charles Street Tap at the same time. We’re hoping there might be time to catch Cowboy Hunters at Volks a little before then (6.45pm), their furiously sarcastic and decidedly catchy deconstructions of British cultural assumptions growing sadly ever more relevant. Also worth seeing will be Lifeloose at Folklore Rooms at 6.30pm. At Revenge, ladylike play a hometown set at 7.45pm, before an almighty clash at 8.15pm between Silverwingkiller (Concorde 2), Truthpaste (One Church) and Alice Costelloe (Prince Albert). Best practice is to note all of these down and pick which you are in the mood for. Thankfully they cover a rather broad spectrum of styles, from the intense cut-up electronica of Silverwingkiller to the gentler musings of Costelloe, Truthpaste’s electronics-tinged chamber indie sitting somewhere in between. The following hour brings similar predicaments, with sets from Lauren Auder, PVA, Gently Tender, Humane the Moon, World News, Madra Salach and Y all kicking off at 9.15pm. This also runs alongside a headline slot from Peaches at Brighton Dome, though pass holders will need separate tickets to get into that. As the night wears on, there are second chances to catch casual smart (Komedia, 10pm), Pollyfromthedirt (Prince Albert, 10.15pm) and Fellatio (Hope and Ruin, 11.45pm). You can also catch Mandy, Indiana at 10.15pm at The Old Market, while at 11.15pm Canadian post-punks La Securité bring their imposing sound to Charles Street Tap. Further to all this, unofficial highlights from Friday evening include Dreamwave and The Motor Show at Hotel Peliroco, Shaking Hand and Glasshouse Red Spider Mite at The Oak, Blitzcat Records at Folklore Rooms – featuring Kiosk, Ashnymph, Goodbye and Flip Top Head – and Strong Island Recordings at the Pipeline, where LIPWORMS, Wyatt, Pebbledash and Mleko precede two tantalisingly poised secret headliners.

Saturday

On Saturday, the industry clamour of the festival has been known to calm a little, allowing for more time to focus on the litany of bands available to go and see. This year, the Saturday gets off to a hectic start, with competing sets from local psych-folk songwriter Maximilian (Komedia, 12.15pm), Welsh art punks Why Horses? (Prince Albert, 12.30pm) and Truthpaste (Horatio’s, 12.30pm). Following any of these, you can catch shoegazers Glasshouse Red Spider Mite at Komedia Studio (1.15pm), beguiling singer-songwriter Jackson Roy at DUST (1.15pm), ramshackle indie folk ensemble The Slow Country at Waterbear (1.30pm) or Hard of Hearing favourites Legss at the Prince Albert (1.30pm). That afternoon, there are also shows from Ain’t (Horatio’s, 2.30pm), Bug Teeth (Waterbear, 2.30pm), what will be a hectic afternoon set from Y (Patterns, 2.30pm), Opal Mag (Komedia, 3.15pm), Shaking Hand (Prince Albert, 3.30pm) and Hank (Waterbear, 3.30pm).

If you’ve still got anything left in the tank by Saturday night, you will be rewarded with shows from the likes of aforementioned jangling dream-pop ensemble Goodbye at the Beach Stage from 7.15pm, Jonique, the new solo project from one half of Fräulein, at Chalk at 7.15pm and the very new London group August (TGE Beach, 8.15pm). An Alt Escape run at the bandstand on Brighton beach features the imposing quartet of Rampressure, Paper Hats, Jawharp and Gegenpress, while Morn play at Alphabet at 9pm and Canned Pineapple are on at The Bootlegger from 9.30pm.

Getting The Great Escape right is a fine art of balancing priority artists, venue queues, beer timings (if you’re drinking) and general energy levels. Perhaps the wisest advice I ever heard was never to ‘chase’ it. If you’re enjoying things at one venue and are keen on the next band up, probably best to hang about there rather than dashing somewhere else halfway across town. Also important is to go in with an open mind to catching something you’ve never heard of before. This packed out preview collects just about everyone playing that we know we’d like to see, but doubtless by the time we’re writing up our review of the weekend, we’ll be shouting about countless new favourites. Sticking to the plan is not essential, but having some sort of a plan (and a few backups) is the best way to navigate your way through this most intense of British festivals. As the week progresses, keep an eye out for clashfinders for official and unofficial events as well as updates from our side on socials. It’s going to be a hell of a weekend.