Here’s some info on the initial line up announcement for this year’s The Great Escape down beside the South Coast seaside, and below is a hurriedly compiled playlist comprising various supposed highlights:

‘Scintillating sonics are drizzling freely out of Bristol at the minute, the likes of Empty Pools, and Towns, and Spectres etc. ad infinitum reconnecting the city with a more amp-ridden and ultimately instrumental aesthetic. Deviating stylistically from any and indeed every one of the aforesaid however – albeit whilst retaining that same sense of organicity – are Dear Leaders who, behind that picturesque artwork above, construct a sort of gawky majesty via chilling cascades of guitar, gelid spurts of synth, the odd incongruously warm acoustic, and ever more odd and oddly empowering Paul O’Grady diatribes. The Not Summer EP standout is, shock horror, Not Summer: a Kraut-y surge that disorientates as much as it delights, especially under such dismal meteorological conditions.’

‘If you’ve skulked around these parts on previous occasions our affection for Weston-super-Mare shoegazers Towns will no doubt be already obvious. Their blend of nostalgic retrospection on barely terminated teens and propulsive desire to bring the swirling shoegaze of their upbringing into a rather more contemporary consciousness renders them a terrifically enticing proposition and, for once in a while, the live show lives up to such hyperbolic billing too. So what relevance? Well, they’ve contributed a gooey dream of a thing appositely entitled Too Tired to We(s)t Country label Howling Owl Records’ Record Store Day offering. The track has gone into momentary hibernation although we’ll have it back with you shortly. In the meantime, accompanying Towns on the flipside to the release which also features the excellent Spectres is Matt Williams. Once operating under the Team Brick moniker, the Beak> constituent these days functions as Fairhorns and this here contribution protracts Williams’ link with the nominally avifaunal. Going by the name of Sparrows Rush to Fuck You Up, the result is a disconcerting brood of hacked-up larynx garble, Kraut infusion and roisterous drum clunk that gradually elevates the track to quite devastating denouement, a little like a grotty street pigeon inflated until the point of feather-aflutter combustion.’

Howling Owl’s latest release, limited to a run of 100, is of course out Saturday (April 21st) to coincide with this year’s increasingly omnipresent and now imminent Record Store Day…