Photo: Richard Gray
It's a blessing and a curse to go to a festival with a line-up this good. Tonight for example - the opening night of The Great Escape - Kate Tempest clashes with Ibeyi, Tor Miller, Aldous Harding, Tei Shi, Soak and George The Poet. If you suffer from FOMO, this festival is likely to send you into a potentially fatal tailspin. It's with decidedly mixed feelings, then, that we decide to stay in Coalition and commit to watching the showcase of XL's newest artists. Thankfully, the decision proves itself to be a good one.
First up is Lapsley, whose show has caused such hype we very nearly fail to get in (another common frustration at city-wide festivals). Live, the vibrato in her voice is starkly noticeable, her accent decidely stronger. We don't actually get to see much of her - the venue isn't exactly ideal for a packed gig - but the layered, richly textured sounds she produces are more important.
Towards the end, the set starts to lose a bit of its spark, as if she's slipped into autopilot, and the crowd's inappropriate chatter becomes louder. She wins back their attention though with the beautiful, haunting 'Station' - during which she wears her James Blake influences on her sleeve and alternates between two microphones, one of which distorts her voice to recreate the deep, unsettling effect of the song's bridge.
Next up is Shamir, who at 20 is one of the oldest performers of the evening. Yes, really. The agendered timbre of his voice has intrigued and enchanted fans since he burst onto the scene with 'On The Regular' last year. In his own words, "It's not feminine, it's not masculine. It's a happy medium ... I feel like if the world was more like that, our problems would be gone."
Tonight, he performs with a similar earnestness, bounding joyously around the stage, occasionally throwing his arms out as if he wants to soak up every essence of the crowd's enthusiasm. "I wrote this song as a joke, and people seemed to like it," he says before bursting into 'On The Regular', spraying his face with water to counter the effects of so much unrestrained energy, "so I guess the joke's on me."
Novelist and Mumdance close the evening, performing their grimey delight of a joint EP, 1 Sec. While Mumdance hides behind his decks, 17-year-old Novelist is joined by a silent hype man, who contributes nothing but his exuberant presence - a presence Novelist seems to appreciate and feed off. There are times when the speed of his rapping runs away with him and he trips over his words. On one such occasion he decides to quit that song while he's behind and requests instead that he perform '1 Sec'. Without a moment's hesitation, Mumdance obliges, and Novelist shows off once again his rhythmically witty MC skills.
After Novelist's set, the entire XL clan - Lapsley, Ibeyi, Shamir - congregate in the smoking area, where, despite having collectively packed out the venue for the entire evening, they manage to go largely unnoticed. Off the strength of tonight, we suspect that won't be the case for much longer.
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