The Great Escape

We’re back at The Great Escape festival, hosting a Selector Radio stage at the fabulous Fabrica venue featuring four phenomenal UK artists as part our Selector Sessions series. We’re also bringing a group of music industry delegates from around the world to soak up UK music for themselves and make connections with the UK music industry.

The Great Escape is the renowned UK music festival – hosted in Brighton on the south coast of England each year – ready to bring 450 emerging acts to the attention of crowds, packed with music industry figures and fans, around the city. Brighton will be awash with new music in venues from 14-17 March 2025 and there will be a pop-up festival site on Brighton Beach itself. There’s also The Alternative Escape, which offers emerging local artists an opportunity to reach new crowds, and, if the days themselves are not long enough to discover ‘the next big thing’, there’s The Late Escape – secret gigs, club nights and spontaneous collaborations that keep the music going, deep into the wee small hours.

corto.alto

Scottish composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Liam Shortall, aka corto.alto, has had an incredible couple of years including nomination for and delivery of many iconic music awards. His debut album Bad With Names was shortlisted for the iconic Mercury Prize (2024) and won Best Album at the Scottish Jazz Awards. In 2025, he won both the UK Jazz Act of the Year and The Innovation Award at the Jazz FM Awards. corto.alto has been described as a traditional jazz head raised in the age of the internet, bringing a fresh perspective to a heady mix of intuitive improvisation, electronic production, broken beat bounce and bass-heavy dub.

pecq

pecq have been releasing music blending ‘analog synth scapes, crunchy drums, found sounds and arresting vocals’ since 2021 to deliver ‘pop at its most exploratory’ (CLASH). They are a producer and multi-instrumentalist duo: one half is Hannah (Jakes) Jacobs – synth player for Barry Can’t Swim and Arlo Parks – and the other half is Nikò O'Brien – engineer for the Liz Fraser, Porij and more. Their music has been featured on BBC Radio 1, 2 and 6 including as part of 6 Music’s Introducing Best of 2022. Get ready for kaleidoscopic alt pop.

Nectar Woode

Blend the influence of Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill and D’Angelo together with musical roots of Ghanaian heritage and prepare for Nectar Woode – the guitarist, songwriter and vocalist from Milton Keynes. Her debut EP Nothing To Lose delivers jazz guitar, ‘heartfelt songwriting and soulful delivery’ (Intersect Magazine) ably assisted by co-writers and producers Bad Sounds (Arlo Parks, Rose Gray) and Tobie Tripp (Tom Misch, Dave). 

Hotwax

NME have called Hotwax’s debut album Hot Shock – released 7 March 2025 – ‘a blistering debut from future rock titans’. The album follows on from Hotwax’s support for Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Royal Blood and The Libertines and – produced by the all-female production team of Catherine Marks (Boygenius, Wolf Alice), Steph Marziano (Hayley Williams, Let’s Eat Grandma) and Stella Mozgawa (Warpaint) – captures the energy of the band’s live shows. ‘We called it a Hot Shock because it’s about the heightened emotions we’ve had over the past two years’ says vocalist and guitarist Tallulah Sim-Savage who, together with drummer Alfie Sayers and bassist Lola Sam, will be closing our showcase with a bang at The Great Escape 2025.