UK Wins By A Distance

London funk band Jungle finished a festival ahead of Brighton rock duo Royal Blood as the two UK acts fought out a close finish to this year’s European Talent Exchange Programme, with the rest of field beaten by a distance.

Photo: Courtesy of Giant Noise / Corona Capital
Corona Capital Festival, Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, Mexico City, Mexico

In what was yet another record-breaking ETEP, which saw 102 acts share 321 festival slots, Jungle finished with 15 of them and Royal Blood collected 14. Jungle and Royal Blood were the only ones to reach double figures, as Irish troubadour Hozier and Danish singer-songwriter  came joint-third with nine shows apiece. 

German soft-rock duo Milky Chance was fifth with eight shows German band Ballet School, Dutch rock act Birth Of Joy, Spanish electro whizzkid Pional and Swiss pop act Kadebostany all collected seven shows, but so did yet another UK act – singer-songwriter George EzraCirca Waves and Wild Beasts, two of the five acts that finished with six shows, also come from the UK.

The other three were Benjamin Clementine (France), Mighty Oaks (Germany) and Swiss rockers The Animen, which gave Switzerland a higher than usual ETEP profile.

Although Jungle and Royal Blood finished a long way clear of the field, the strength in depth of this year’s ETEP was that all the Top 20 acts got at least five shows each. Almost 50 acts benefited by each getting at least three foreign festival appearances from this year’s programme.

Photo: © Victor Picon
Rock En Seine Festival, Paris, France

CEETEP, the Central Eastern European Talent Exchange Programme, a sort of ETEP sub-program for former Eastern Bloc countries, was won by Latvian offbeat folkies Carnival Youth, which secured three shows.