Starting electrical fires with ELLiS-D: The Great Escape 2025 begins
The smell of burning plastic is unmistakable and undeniable – nine strange first words to write about a festival at the seaside. The music world has once again descended on Britain’s seaside haunt, Brighton for The Great Escape, and as it all kicks off at Green Door Store for an incredible open party, ELLiS-D provided the ultimate metaphor for this year’s festivities; the smell of burning plastic, a spark, something electrifying.
Already, only a few hours into being here, that’s how it feels. That’s party because Green Door Store truly is one of the Brighton thriving music scene’s spiritual homes and that love for the room, and everyone’s love for each other is felt so clearly in the air as a line up of some of the city’s most beloved acts packs the place out with voices keen to sing along and scream their name.
The bands respond. I caught both Hutch and ELLiS-D, two acts I’ve now seen many, many times. But in both instances, this felt new. After seeing Hutch many times in London, witnessing their Brighton selves is like seeing them in technicolour. They fully indulged in the show, extending their always-tight, nostalgia-informed psych tracks from neater, Beach Boys-inspired things into meandering, epic moments that are louder and bolder than I’ve ever heard from the group.
Everything was on a different scale, and suddenly the group were rockstars – seemingly that’s what happens in the energy of a hometown show. I thought it was just that; the power of community ridding of any stage shyness. But as ELLiS-D hits the stage, and the burning plastic smell floats in, it’s something different.
It’s only two songs in when Green Door Store’s venue room starts loosely smelling like fire. My friends and I look at each other, laughing a little at the idea of the sprinklers going off right now. We wonder if we’re imagining it, but no, others whisper about it. The bassist on stage seems to smell it too, at one point I think I catch her turning round to sniff their amps to check. It smells like an electrical fire. It smells like ELLiS-D is genuinely playing so hard that something has sparked.
It wouldn’t surprise me. He’s also an artist transformed here. While always hypnotic, this show saw him turn into a spinning planet with an unshakable attention-driven gravitational pull, as people barely even moved, all stood with their eyes wide and hooked on him, pupils bulging as they became ever more drawn toward the spectacle. It’s almost intimidating – he plays with the crowd, adding false stops into his songs, then laughing as we fall for them, cheering loudly before he cuts through it with another huge riff. It’s chaos, pure musical chaos, but made by another incredibly tight band. Despite the frantic energy of the music, the leader moves with his guitar like it’s simply part of his body, so as the whole room sweats and burns, it wouldn’t have surprised me if that guitar was burning too.
And that’s where the symbolism lies. As we’re reminded by Hutch during their set, last year, all the musicians on Green Door Store’s lineup on this night pulled out of the official lineup, along with hundreds of others. To protest the festival’s ties with Barclays, who had connections to the actions we’re seeing horrifically unfold in Gaza, artists pulled out en masse, and the energy on the ground that weekend was conflicting and largely not that fun. Even though the city came together for more unofficial events, even those were tainted by the weight of taking action.
This year, already, is the total antidote – the lightness is so palpable that it’s catching, it’s electric, seemingly. The music world took action, and it actually worked. The festival cut ties with Barclays. Bands are back on the bill and are excited to be here. This weekend will be fun; everyone can enjoy themselves, whether they have a wristband or not. But mostly, that fact is incredible fuel. To know that change actually happened right here off the back of this musical community’s actions, no wonder there was a potential spark with so much passion in the room, both on-stage from the players, and off from the fans who made a difference and now get to bask in the fact, looking ahead to move electrifying sets.
