Brighton’s The Great Escape Festival, by some margin the largest new music industry event in Europe, is upon us and 300+ artists will be descending upon this tiny town to play shows Thursday, Friday and Saturday. In this week’s This Music Wins I take you through 4 artists I think you should check out - Boy Friend, Porcelain Raft, Slow Down Molasses, and Milagres.

Resonance FM is also running its own stage - on which I will be performing with Kinnie The Explorer. Arrive promptly 7pm @ The Haunt on Saturday 12th of May to catch us - we are followed by the excellent Vondelpark, Porcelain Raft and the sublime Micachu & The Shapes. Here’s the facebook event.

Let me know if you want to meet for a beer! @peterlanceley

Major Napier - Major Soldier EP

I first introduced Australian artist Major Napier to you last November; a time when I was particularly enamoured with his cover of Sharon Van Etten’s Lovemore. Almost immediately after I wrote, he released a free download EP of bedroom-recorded songs entitled ‘Major Soldier’, which I was reminded of via an enthused post on Zen Tapes today. The slow, booming drum-sound prevalent throughout “Crowning Observation” (below) is idiosyncratic of the whole release, Johnny Ross careful to  keep the beat sufficiently organic-sounding and sunken in reverb to explicate the full aura of lo-fi ambience. There’s a new electronic dimension here; and a wide-ranging set of angular multi-layered harmonies which are decidedly direction-less. ’Amazing/ A Tribute to Jan Zajíc’ is a frivolous and swirling hip-hop influenced piece of folk-induced electronica, with a loose Kanye-style autotune (which works in the least obnoxious way possible) and Braids-esque psychedelic grandeur in the instrumentals. The limited-run CD will set you back just $10 Australian dollars, the download is totally free. Both options workable from Major Napier’s Bandcamp page.