READING & LEEDS 2022 - ACTS NOT TO MISS (LEEDS SATURDAY / READING FRIDAY)
DAVE
The record-breaking release of ‘We’re All Alone In This Together’ (July 2021), solidified Dave as one of the great artists of our time. The biggest first week UK sales across all genres for 2 years (74,000+) and the biggest UK Rap record in over a decade. Surpassing all his peers, it spent 2 weeks at #1, a feat only matched by Olivia Rodrigo & Drake this calendar year, achieving Gold Status (100,000 sales) within 3 weeks and well on its way to Platinum in the UK.
Few artists can harness that early promise and deliver upon expectations with their debut body of work as Dave did with ‘Psychodrama’ (2019), hitting that rare combination of critically acclaimed and commercially successful album that few artists ever reach. It only made the anticipation & expectation for ‘WAAITT’ far greater & Dave not only met those pressures that come with being anointed head on but constantly set new bars for himself and those around him. The title (taken from a conversation between himself & Hans Zimmer) encapsulating the themes of migration & heritage alongside his mother’s own story. With star-turns from Wizkid, Snoh Aalegra, BOJ & Oscar-winner Daniel Kaluuya, the album shot to #1 just weeks after being announced on the back of first single ‘Clash’, a Stormzy-featuring behemoth that peaked at #2 (450,000 UK sales, 114M+ Global streams) and became one of the anthems to a lockdown-lifted Summer.
MEGAN THEE STALLION
Hailing from Houston, Megan Thee Stallion is a three time GRAMMY winner, philanthropist and ever-evolving cultural icon. From the release of her critically acclaimed and Gold certified debut album, Good News, to earning two global record breaking Billboard Hot 100 #1 hits with the “Savage Remix” featuring Beyoncé, and “WAP” with Cardi B, Megan has proven unstoppable. Megan has been recognized for her musical achievements with three GRAMMY wins, including Best New Artist and nine BET Awards.
Megan was also honored as one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020. In October 2020, following a powerful and politically charged performance on Saturday Night Live that demanded justice for Breonna Taylor, Megan published her monumental “Why I Speak Up For Black Women” op-ed and accompanying visual with The New York Times.
POLO G
Polo G has been unstoppable and is one of music’s top rising talents. Aptly named Polo G after his favorite lifestyle brand, Polo by Ralph Lauren, and his slain friend Gucci, Polo is determined to leave his mark. Following the highly anticipated release of the 22-year-old Chicago rapper’s latest single, “RAPSTAR”, the song has gone on to explode worldwide to instant chart success, earning Polo his first ever Billboard Hot 100 #1 single, while debuting at #1 on Spotify in the U.S. and #1 on the Apple Music global chart. “RAPSTAR” achieved the highest streaming debut of 2021 for a male artist and the 2nd highest streaming debut of the year for any artist in the U.S.
GLASS ANIMALS
At the beginning of the third album from London band Glass Animals, frontman Dave Bayley asks himself a series of questions about fundamental issues: identity, memory, love, friendship, the person you have been and the person you want to be. How do you answer so many questions that cut to the heart of who you are? Well, Bayley sings in the very last line, “You go make an album and call it Dreamland.”
“I’ve always hated the idea of writing about myself,” says Bayley, who is Glass Animals’ singer, songwriter and producer. On Dreamland, at last, he throws off that reluctance and takes the plunge. It’s a memoir in the form of a song cycle, inspired by sonic maestros from Brian Wilson to Timbaland, and it holds nothing back.
LITTLE SIMZ
With Mercury and Mobo nominations, Ivor Novello and NME Awards, a critically garlanded music career and a starring role in Top Boy, one of the most talked about Netflix reboots under her belt, Simz has undoubtedly had a meteoric few years, coming a long way from her start handing out mixtapes in the school playground. There’s no question she was always poised for success though; she has always been an artist – wildly ambitious, fiercely talented and devoted to her work – for as long as she can remember. But it wasn’t until she started marking her new album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, on the verge of her twenty-sixth birthday, that she realised the toll that success was taking on her personal life. “I decided to go out to LA and do some sessions. I wanted to open a fresh notebook and analyse this part of my life; I didn’t find the writing experience easy, I went to depths that are really uncomfortable” she admits. “I pushed my pen, I really challenged myself”.
ALL TIME LOW
By fully tapping into the power of their lifelong union as friends and bandmates, All Time Low ignite a new spark on their 2020 eighth full-length studio album, Wake Up, Sunshine [Fueled By Ramen]. These four lifelong friends— Alex Gaskarth [lead vocals, guitar], Jack Barakat [lead guitar, backing vocals], Zack Merrick [bass, backing vocals], and Rian Dawson [drums]—walked into a tiny room, plugged in, and turned up with the same spirit, but a little more wisdom, a lot more experience, and proficiency gained by performing to millions worldwide. As a result, they delivered a dynamic body of work at the apex of pop punk prowess, rock energy, and genre-busting adventurousness.
CIRCA WAVES
“I feel like I’ve got a fire in my belly with this record,” says Kieran Shudall, almost straight away. “Now, I want us to be the biggest and the best. I want to headline festivals. Whereas with the first one I was a bit more like, ‘Oh I’ll take it as it comes, and see what happens…”
We all know what happened with ‘Young Chasers’, the debut album by Circa Waves, that arrived in March of last year hitting the top 10. That it berthed four Radio 1 A-list singles, the most notable – and for a time completely unavoidable – of which was ‘T-Shirt Weather’. That after its release they seemed to rise very fast indeed, to the extent that a mere six months on, the whole of a sold out Brixton Academy was jumping up and down as one, singing every last line of its thirteen direct, propulsive, carefree, indie pop songs. “When I saw the way that people connected with it,” Kieran continues, “I really started to believe in myself. I’m a different person now.”
This much is emphatically evident in the new songs, and the second album. From the very first moment, it sounds like a different, louder band, and showcases Kieran’s disenchantment with the world he sees, with more in common with Foo Fighters or even Nirvana than with, say, The Strokes. Co-produced by Alan Moulder (“He heard us on the radio, and said to his engineer: ‘Didn’t this band want to work with me? Why the fuck am I not doing their second record?’”), the pop sensibility is still there, but now it comes buried in up-to-11 alt-rock guitars. It is very much not the sound of a band giving people more of what they know that people want from them. In every respect, it is the sound of a band who are going with their hearts, changing up because they have to, taking a risk and moving forward. “I think the rest of the band were quite shocked when they first heard these songs,” Kieran notes. “I mean, they’ve all always been into heavier stuff as well. But I think everyone was a little bit nervous at first: just going, ‘Will the fans like this?’ But then we just thought, ‘Well, fuck it, we can’t just keep doing the same thing. So we then just had to embrace it.”
JOY CROOKES
A proud South Londoner of Bangladesh and Irish heritage, Joy Crookes is a singer-songwriter, a masterful instrumentalist, a Brit nominated rising star, and an artist who sees herself as part of a beautiful eco system of storytellers, mavericks, and salt of the earth Londoners. Her unique approach to storytelling within her songs, partnered with her infectious charisma has seen her become a treasured and trusted new voice both musically and across her social media. Joy uses her creativity as a tool to understand her own identity, her place in the world and her relationships within it.
GRIFF
Griff is a one-of-a-kind artist, producer, fashion designer and star who has already been hailed “pop’s next powerhouse” (Vogue). Born in the sleepy town of Kings Langley, she started writing music aged 15, also realising – from her Chinese-Jamaican heritage to their lively family household, who also foster children – that she was different. Even in the face of a global pandemic, Griff’s rise (largely achieved from that same bedroom) has appeared unstoppable: from her immediately-signature bubble ponytail to songs which are simultaneously intimate, heartfelt and hugely empowering, Griff is that rare talent, write The Guardian, “deserving of the hype.”
BLACK HONEY
Heroes and villains. Bad-ass bitches and dead-end deserters. Love, lust, hate and all that’s in between. Ever since Black Honey stomped onto the scene in a head-rush of grit and glitter, the Brighton quartet have set about building their own incendiary, inclusive universe from the inside out.
It’s one that’s seen the band – formed of singer and chief ringleader Izzy B. Phillips, guitarist Chris Ostler, bassist Tommy Taylor and recent addition drummer Alex Woodward – swell from intriguingly anomalous newcomers, infusing every early release with bold, theatrical videos and increasingly iconic artwork, to one of UK indie’s most singular outfits. They’ve travelled the world and released a Top 40 album; graced the cover of the NME and become the faces and soundtrack of Roberto Cavalli’s Milan Fashion Week show; smashed Glastonbury and supported Queens of the Stone Age, all without compromising a shred of the wild, wicked vision they first set out with.
FRANK CARTER & THE RATTLESNAKES
Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes had just played the gig of their lives, headlining Alexandra Palace in London, when the world pressed the pause button. At first, they went into the studio to bottle that intensity, of being one of the best live acts in the country, with a number four album in 2019’s End of Suffering. But during the uncertainty of the past year, where they snatched pockets of time to write together when they could, Frank Carter and Dean Richardson ended up with something far gnarlier, channeling all their frustrations and the grittiness of the city into 10 eviscerating tracks. Let’s get one thing straight, though: “It’s not a lockdown record,” says Carter, “it’s a freedom record.”
Sticky, their fourth album, clearly marks the next phase for the Rattlesnakes and was produced, for the first time, by Richardson. It solidifies the pair as one of the most exciting partnerships in punk-rock and Carter – since his early days in hardcore punk band Gallows and then as Pure Love – as a vital voice in UK music, rallying against injustice, the patriarchy, right-wing politics and toxic masculinity.
GORGON CITY
Gorgon City are world builders. The duo’s shared moniker and computer-rendered imagery draw on the hedonism of the ancient Greeks, but also the period’s extraordinary gamut of
discovery, creativity, and ambition. Since first linking up for a run of singles at the turn of the decade, Gorgon City – comprising Kye Gibbon and Matt Robson-Scott have entrenched themselves in global club culture, offering a heady mix of big room house and underground heaters. In 2014, the pair introduced their high-concept, hard-hitting approach with Sirens. The album’s ‘ancient futurist’ approach drew on classic club sounds and the new bass-heavy
house music emerging from the UK’s clubs at the time (the ‘Gorgon’ in their name is also a nod to dancehall legend Ninjaman, and the influence of bassy soundsystem music on the pair’s signature style). A penchant for huge hooks and a knack for identifying rising songwriters added elements that saw the pair’s popularity surge. Sirens was home to five top 20 singles – including the MNEK- featuring ‘Ready For Your Love’, which went to number four, became a timeless club anthem, and minted a new singing star in the process.
FEVER 333
Rebellion needed a soundtrack. It got that and a whole lot more from FEVER 333. Rallying around a mission of “art as activism” in 2017, the group first publicly assembled with an unpermitted D333MONSTRATION in front of a South Central Los Angeles landmark—ducking out before the cops came, but leaving a mark on the streets of their hometown. Shockwaves rippled through the culture. The title track of their MADE AN AMERICA EP scored a 2019 GRAMMY® Award nod in the category of “Best Rock Performance.” Their full-length Roadrunner Records/333 Wreckords Crew debut LP, STRENGTH IN NUMB333RS, toppled 60 million total streams. KERRANG! christened it, “The best debut album of 2019,” honored the group with “Best Song” at the 2019 KERRANG! Awards, and included them on a cover alongside Metallica, Jimmy Page, Ghost, and Skunk Anansie. Not to mention, they have collaborated with everyone from POPPY to RUN-D.M.C. and Vic Mensa.
KID KAPICHI
The punk-rock heavyweights from Hastings stamped their name firmly onto the hide of the UK scene in 2019. Peddling a unique mixture of explosive riffs, bone-crushing live shows, and ear worming melodies of the duel-lead vocals and guitar.
Renowned for their live ferocious live shows, on stage is where Kid Kapichi really come alive. Fronted by Jack Wilson & Ben Beetham (joint lead guitar/vocals), with the other half of their ear-shattering sound emanating from George Macdonald (drums) & Eddie Lewis (bass). Having shared the stage with the likes of Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes, Fidlar and Slaves; Kid Kapichi’s name is hot on the lips of the UK live music circuit.
Other sets across the day to check out from As It Is and BBC Introducing Stage which include: Dan D’Lion, BILK, Priestgate, Dolores Forever, Caity Baser, Deadletter, SISI, Flowerolove, Honeyglaze and Courting.
As well secret sets across the weekend. Here’s hoping Jamie T makes appearance.