Thursday 15/05/08 Day 1, The Great Escape @ Various Venues, Brighton

Look out Austin; Brighton’s coming for you. Now in its third year, the UK’s take on Texas’ taste-shaping South By Southwest, The Great Escape, has quickly grown from a decidedly baby-sized festival into the terrifically energetic toddler of an event we see before us this weekend. Higher profile, more industry speakers, a ****-off purple cow and an alternative fringe to the main festival make this bonanza hard to avoid. So, never ones to have much will power (festival patches anyone?) at the best of times, Gigwise follows the hoards down to the seaside to trail around the city’s plethora of venues and hopefully find time to stretch out the wind breaker and sun lotion.

While we like to think of ourselves as thoroughly detached and impartial, this year Gigwise is attending the festival as part of the ‘the machine’ by hosting our very own stage over the three days downstairs in The Ocean Rooms. The nod to organize next year’s GazzaAid must just be a formality now you'd think...

One of the venues on the map to benefit from a glossy spruce-up since last year’s shindig, is Digital, nee Zap, right on the seafront under the arches, spitting distance from the carousel. Decidedly more ‘nite club’ these days with a sheen of grandeur in comparison to its rough-around-the-edges charm of previous visits, the place is playing host to some of the weekend’s bigger sets. First on the agenda for us (after buying and eating some rock in the shape of a full English) are Fanfarlo. This sextet of London based multi-instrumentalists lead by a Swede create quite simply a lovely noise. Employing a broad gamut of toys including violin, glockenspiel, accordion, mandolin, banjo and sax they instantly suggest Arcade Fire as a reference point, but their slightly reserved and relaxed tone is more reminiscent of Sufjan Stevens’ expressive but playful work. Glorious and cute in their delivery and reliance on somewhat twee percussion at times, via tunes such as recent single ‘Harold T Wilkins’ and ‘We Live By The Lake’ Fanfarlo bring us a thoroughly warming and affirming set and charm the pants off an initially diffident crowd.

Next up are the North East’s finest, and perpetual sleeping giants The Futureheads. Flying in from the wings at hundred miles an hour the band zip straight into a frenetic showing of 'Decent Days and Nights’; a slap around the face after Fanfarlo’s warm-bath-n-candles of a set. A newly taut and meaner show is put on by the band these days, May sees the launch of third long player ‘This Is Not The World’ and first off their own back. Since being struck off by 679 Recordings a couple of years back (a record label seemingly more demanding than Roman Abramovich) The Futureheads have been through the mill but it is evident tonight that they are all glad they came back to give it another shot.

Sneering like the Mackam bastard love child of Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer, Barry Hyde narrates the set touchingly throughout as banter from band members Jaff and Ross help to punctuate the killer catalogue of ‘Hounds Of Love’, ‘Skip To The End’, ‘The Beginning Of The Twist’, ‘Area’ and new single ‘Radio Heart’. A triumphant and indelibly sweaty show – Barry: “I think this is the hottest gig we’ve ever done” –  has surely succeeded in casting the minds of the new-music seeking throng back to 2004 and reminding them it that it doesn’t have to be all about day-glo and skinny jeans, well not exclusively anyway.

Talking of which, current radio and music press darlings (not to mention chart toppers at time of writing) the Ting Tings are arguably the biggest headlining draw on opening night at The Great Escape (save The Whip on the Gigwise stage that is). Packing out the city's Barfly venue, and subsequently leaving hundreds stranded outside in the queue, the band's delayed set (technical bits probably) finally got underway in the early hours of Friday morning. Firing the starting pistol with their other song 'Great DJ' the exuberant duo (well, exuberant Katie) have the best intentions of fulfulling the hyperbole surrounding them (and justifiying the full pavement of people outside) but the sound system tonight lets them down.

The thoroughly inconsistent quality of their material doesn't help either; some tunes sickeningly catchy and some not so and frankly midly irritating. 'That's Not My Name' cleans up as expected but despite willing the band to blow them away (the precious “I was there when” boast key to tonight) the faces of many punters give them away as feeling short changed. Nay bother, they've got another set around the corner tomorrow...