Find out more about ReBalance’s finalists. Each finalist will receive one week’s studio time including an engineer as well as travel and accommodation. At the end of the year, Festival Republic commits to giving these successful acts a slot at a Festival Republic or Live Nation festival.
Aoife McCann creates pop songs to make you feel emboldened and free.
Æ Mak’s tribal electronic soundscape and punk-esque energy conceives a bewitching live act that allows audiences to escape to another realm.
Liverpool-based singer/songwriter/producer Mary Miller fuses drum loops and samples with a haunting 50s-esque guitar tone to craft her epic blend of hip-hop, dream-pop and retro guitar pop. Tripping backwards and forwards in time through dreamy landscapes, she takes to the stage with only a guitar and a sampler to craft cinematic, otherworldy lullabies.
Projector occupy the heavy space between brooding 80s darkwave and My Bloody Valentine’s wall-of-sound pop; a combination tone of Goo-era Sonic Youth and Pixies pulled together with an industrial Joy Division pulse.
Lazy Day is the musical vehicle for the songs of Tilly Scantlebury. Formerly a member of indie rockers Hella Better Dancer, just over a year ago she decided to immerse herself in her own musical world, recording in her bedroom on Garageband and exposing her creations via SoundCloud.
Often referred to as a supergroup, Magick Mountain consists of members who have previously had success in other Leeds based bands; Lins (Mother Vulpine, Sky Larkin), Tom (Pulled Apart By Horses) and Nestor (Sky Larkin, Menace Beach).
Maya Kally is a singer-songwriter and composer with Jazz influence from North London. Her distinct style encompasses lust, heartbreak, and topics less spoken about within society. A Leeds College of Music alumnus, Maya’s music has taken inspiration from living in cities and finding serenity in fast-paced environments.
Tamzene is a young singer-songwriter from the coastal town of Cromarty in the Scottish Highlands; a highly talented multi-instrumentalist, she started learning piano and violin when she was eight years old, encouraged by her saxophonist stepfather and salsa teaching mother. Aged 14 she further extended her musical dexterity by quickly picking up guitar and embarked on writing her own material. Her early influences came from hearing the Roberta Flack, Aretha Franklin and Eva Cassidy songs played around the home- and quickly progressed to immersing herself in the sound of artists including Nina Simone, Birdy and Alicia Keys.
The Glasgow-based alt-rock quartet, helmed by twin sisters Hannah and Chloe Van Thompson, make an art of cherry-picking the finest the decade had to offer, weaving shimmering shoegaze in with dirgey, grungey riffing and snarling rock’n’roll – and then dressing it up for a decidedly modern audience.
TrueMendous carefully intertwines the art of storytelling with ear clenching wordplay, bizarre punchlines and in detailed poetry to narrate her work towards her audience.
Alongside having already released 4 projects, she has performed at: Lovebox festival, Exit Festival in both Serbia and Montenegro, headlined a segment of Cheltenham poetry festival and has worked with BBC 1xra and BBC Three.
She has been featured on multiple media channels across the UK including SB.TV and has also supported/opened up for a wide range of US and UK artist’s including: Akil the Mc, Jeru the Damaja, Capone-N-Noreaga, Akua Naru, Lady Leshurr and Stylo G.
M T Hall aka Madeline Hall is a visual artist, producer and DJ based in Liverpool. Founded on a palette of acidic basslines, trance stabs and tension-building melodies, M T Hall’s productions bleed into strange worlds beyond the dancefloor. Using a range of analogue and digital production techniques, M T Hall primarily composes and performs using synth hardware. She performs regularly around the UK and has upcoming releases with Upitup Records and Pale Master
Soundcloud / Twitter / Facebook / Instagram
Newcastle based musician Martha Hill writes hard-hitting alt-pop with a social conscience. 2018 saw the release of her two debut singles “Spiders” and “Wallflower”, which were championed by The Line Of Best Fit, BBC Radio 6 Music & Spotify Playlist amongst others. Following on from this success, and with the help of PRS Foundation and ReBalance, 2019 will see further releases from Hill including an EP by the end of the year.
LUNA’s samples, sub and sass approach marks her out as one of the most strident voices in UK electronica today. Taking cues from Four Tet’s sampling trickery and the layered production of Sophie, LUNA’s feeling-driven production folds together sparse textures and glitch-skewed beats, creating tense atmospheres that underscore this artist’s keen ear for storytelling drama. Like light piercing the gloom, the crisp vocals of Kate Hazeldine – the producer-vocalist piloting the ship – enter the fray, teasing out even more emotion from the brooding melodrama. It’s a fusion of styles that mirrors the work of fellow female, self-produced artists Banks and FKA Twigs: strength courses through LUNA’s multi-layered soundscapes, which the artist herself describes as “Kate Bush with contemporary production”.
Soundcloud / Twitter / Facebook / Instagram
Birmingham UK born & bred, rapper Lady Sanity has taken inspiration from talents such as Lauryn Hill, A Tribe Called Quest & Ms Dynamite. The GRM Daily’s 2017 ‘Get Rated’; BMA’s 2018 Best Solo Female; & Urban Music Awards One To Watch 2018 award winner intwines hard hitting flows with Grime, 90s Hip Hop & Jazz influences. Her music touches on many social, mental & bureaucratic issues that have inspired her narrative.
Sanity gained her first festival slot at Glastonbury in 2016, followed by BoomBap Festival, The Great Escape, MADE & Shardfest; as well as supporting Hip-Hop heavy’s KRS-one, Lowkey & Roxanne Shante.
Summer 2018 Sanity was able to tick another goal off of her list as she embarked on her first UK tour with Punch Record’s (Welcome To My City Tour). The 5 dates covered Manchester-Liverpool-Southampton- London and Birmingham, concluding with a sold out home town headline.
Recently representing her hometown in front of an estimated 1 billion for the Commonwealth Games 2018 closing ceremony in Australia, the sky is the limit for the upcoming artist.
CHROMA is and Alt-rock trio from the Cynon Valley who write in Welsh and English. Between Katie, Bev and Zac, they offer a fresh style to the local scene.
Since setting up the band in 2015, they have won BBC Radio Cymru’s BOTB in 2016. They released their first EP shortly after and got their songs played by Huw Stephens, Adam Walton and Bethan Elfyn on the radio. The band have played venues in Cardiff such as Tramshed, Clwb Ifor Bach and the Motorpoint Arena, and have played festivals such as Reading+Leeds, BBC’s Biggest Weekend (Swansea), and Festival No. 6.
K double E D Z straight from South London. A Grime artist/lyricist about to make an impact on the scene. If you like flow and punchlines follow and stay tuned for new regular music.
otta is a south London based singer-songwriter and producer. Speaking about working with ReBalance she said, “ReBalance is a great opportunity to work into a new environment and make music that you may not have had the opportunity to create otherwise whilst supporting women in music.”
Rebecca is a 25-year-old singer songwriter from South Wales, United Kingdom – musically centered in Cardiff, Wales and New York City. A beautifully thought provoking musician with contemporary, evocative vocals and relevant lyrics. Rebecca has reached over half a million Facebook users alone with her original songs and covers. She was also the 1st independent artist in Wales to achieve singer songwriter success at the Independent Music Awards in New York City in 2019.
Loaded with pulsating hooks and enigmatic tenacious vocals, Annabel Allum oozes charisma and showcases an inept ability to marry folk-style storytelling with snarling fuzzy indie. The Guildford-based singer songwriter has been backed across tastemaker platforms as one of the most vitally sarcastic voices in the indie scene, with praise from key press voices in FADER, DIY and The Line of Best Fit.
FINNO, is an indie rock trio hailing from Scunthorpe. “Being from a small music scene in a town like Scunthorpe, it’s easy to feel cut off from the rest of the UK music scene, but thanks to ReBalance we can bring our visceral and raw music to the attention of more people and record it with a quality we could otherwise never attain if it wasn’t for their help. Plus, the opportunity to work with a femxle producer-mentor is so exciting, particularly as two-thirds of us study music production.”