Sports Team’s annual Margate trips are infamous in the indie scene; they hire a bus from London and take a rabble rousing bunch on a trip to the sunny Kent coast. This year, Sports Team are doing it in style – they’ve recruited a fantastic line up and the event is now an all-dayer across two venues.

Alex Rice and co have curated quite the lineup for 2021’s seaside holiday. Post-punk upstarts TV Priest are hot off their debut, ‘Uppers’, an in-your-face, raucous album jam-packed with songs to get the pit going. Courting are on the bill, who’s superb EP ‘Grand National’ dropped a matter of weeks ago. Both of these bands have a cult following of dedicated fans – Margate ’21 tickets are going to sell fast!

English Teacher are one of the most exciting additions to the bill: their band of melodic, spoken word indie will strike a chord with Dry Cleaning fans. A further addition is instrumental groove aficionados Los Bitchos, who dropped two superb singles in 2019. There are some DJ sets included, from Golf Ahias, Billie Martin and indie legend and cheif Maccabee, Orlando Weeks.

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Sports Team themselves are fresh from the release of new track, ‘Happy (God’s Own Country’), which is a brilliant, frantic, two minute snapshot of English life and a satire on Tory Britain. The Margate bus trip is bound to be an exciting post-lockdown party for any indie fan. Each of the bands on this bill bring their own niche and the day will surely be full of fun, cans and indie bangers.

Sports Team are also due to play a lengthy UK tour, kicking off in Manchester this winter. They’re stopping off at cities country wide to tour debut album ‘Deep Down Happy’.

The British Music Embassy typically takes over a venue every year at SXSW in Austin, Texas, putting a spotlight on the best new music from around the UK. As the festival is virtual this year due to the ongoing global health crisis, the British Music Embassy has recorded live performances which can be watched on the SXSW portal. A selection of performances will also be made available after Easter for all to view on SXSW’s YouTube channel.

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The full British Music Embassy line-up for SXSW Online 2021 includes 404 Guild, Afronaut Zu,  Anna B Savage, Baby Queen, Beauty Sleep, Black Country, New Road, Chubby and The Gang, Connie Constance, Do Nothing, Drug Store Romeos, Ego Ella May, Enola Gay, Finn Askew, The Goa Express, IDER, Katy J Pearson, Lau.ra, Lilla Vargen, Matilda Mann, The Mysterines, Nayana IZ, Olivia Dean, Onipa, Penelope Isles, Phoebe Green, Porij, PVA, Ryan McMullan, Sinead O’Brien, Squid, Tayo Sound, TV Priest, Virginia Wing, Walt Disco and Yard Act.

Speaking about the event in a press release, Paul Pacifico, Chief Executive Officer at AIM said; “We’re delighted to be returning as a British Music Embassy partner for SXSW 2021. It has always been a key stepping stone for the careers of independent artists, and a valuable way to accelerate their journeys on the international stage. Although we can’t attend in person this year, the positioning of British Music within the virtual showcase platform is the next best thing and a crucial moment to showcase exciting British talent to the world.”

Northern Irish singer-songwriter Lilla Vargen shared her excitement about being on the virtual line-up saying; “The past year has been devastating for live music, and SXSW being able to go ahead in some form is a light at the end of the tunnel, and hopefully can signal the return of more opportunities like this. I can’t wait to head to Austin when it is safe to do so.”

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The British Music Embassy is brought to you this year by AIM, BBC, BPI, the Department for International Trade, PPL, PRS for Music, and PRS Foundation, with further support from ATC, media partner DIY Magazine and Belfast City Council. Since 2008 it has hosted over 450 UK artists, positioning them in front of a global audience in order to help them to break into new markets and advance their careers. The British Music Embassy also uses UK-only production and equipment, giving artists from the UK an unparalleled platform on the world music stage.

Check out the SXSW showcase at The British Music Embassy through the SXSW portal or on SXSW’s YouTube channel.

If anyone had wondered why TV Priest once summarised their sound in NME as “1/10th of the power of Mark E Smith with an AS Level in Politics and access to fuzz pedals“, the picture becomes a lot clearer here. Press Gang is an arresting wall of visceral, art-rock guitars coupled with a snarling spoken vocal in the tradition of the The Fall’s late lyrical agitator.

A Twitter post from official TV Priest account states that the track was inspired by frontman Charlie Drinkwater’s grandfather, a former Fleet Street photojournalist and war correspondent, as well as “…news cycles, truth, chip paper, and information.” The post succinctly adds: “It’s also pretty loud.”

The jarring video – directed by up and coming filmmaker and photographer Joe Wheatley – chimes with a playful and sardonic set of lyrics that take aim at the  veracity of the modern British press (“You’re better off uninformed”). The band themselves are no stranger to biting social commentary, having taken pot-shots at the monarchy and right-wing nationalism on recent tracks House of York and This Island; the latter of which also features on next month’s new LP.

Vocalist Charlie Drinkwater acknowledged that TV Priest were an inherently political band – albeit not one with a rigid manifesto – in a recent interview with KEXP. He said “As artists we aren’t offering up solutions for living, but maybe we can extend a hand and let someone know that you aren’t alone in feeling under prepared in your responses yet powerful in your convictions. That small boats can still make big waves. That we have a world to win.”

He elaborated further on TV Priest’s non-factional progressive politics in a recent interview Dork, lamenting the criticism aimed at other groups for not being openly left-wing enough. He said “The left, by its very nature, has this polyphony of voices but the trouble is that if you’re right-wing, then it’s very easy to be united on things like low taxes and cutting benefits. There are obviously internal wrangling, but ultimately no-one’s calling out others across the right for being less right-wing than them? Even bands like Sports Team, who I think have been unfairly maligned because the politics are there to see in a lot of their songs, just not as overtly. These guys aren’t the enemy, you know? Let’s aim at the right people.”

For a band whose chaotic energy feels perfectly suited to rowdy shows, it seems unbelievable that TV Priest have only played one actual gig – a pre-pandemic gig in Hackney. Drinkwater told The Line of Best Fit that while the group were looking forward to hitting the road, they were in no rush to push socially-distanced shows ahead of time: “Maybe in 6 months time I will eat my words, but right now I’d rather wait until it’s absolutely safe to play shows so we can showcase what we’re all about. I’m around vulnerable people and haven’t even gone to the pub at the moment to socialise. I just hope that people enjoy Uppers and will have the patience to stick around for us.”