Skiddle top five picks for Camden Crawl

Image: Tall Ships

For fans of emerging music and off the beaten track crackers, you can't get much better than Camden Crawl. The London gathering is the original urban multi-venue festival, paving the way for the likes of Sound City and The Great Escape, and this year's festival looks as typically great as ever (check our preview here).

We've picked five acts we think you should check out at this year's two day gathering, with the wide varied range of music on offer picked. Unsure on our choices? You can see the full Camden Crawl line up here.

The Field Friday @ The Electric Ballroom

Kompkat records' The Field has been bringing his off kilter mix of shoegaze, techno and pop to the masses for just over a decade, the Swedish producer having released four albums on the imprint including his classic debut From here we go Sublime.

If you're a fan of club music and electronica with a bit more of a forward thinking slant then this is exactly the ticket for you, with the above live performance of 'Over the Ice' at the Pitchfork Music Festival in 2012 a good indicator of what to expect.

Krept & Konan - Friday @ Underworld

Hip hop and grime duo Krept & Konan remain one of the underground's best success stories, the pair on the cusp of greatness after a consistent presence building of buzz over the past few years.

They've managed to release a slew of mixtapes, enter the world record books for highest album position for an unsigned band and even amassed millions of YouTube hits - for their cover of Jay-Z and Kanye West's 'Otis', before the stateside rappers' legal team got all heavy handed and the video was taken down.

They've since signed with Virgin EMI, with 'Don't waste my time' a big hit for them. Watch them perform it live alongside Clean Bandit as a mashup of the track and the latter's 'Rather be'.

Tall Ships - Friday @ Proud

A group that have been exciting tastemakers since 2010, Tall Ships' live shows are something to behold. Their fusion of visual accompaniments to their music has seen them develop a rapidly increasing following, with panoramic soundscapes informing lavish by angular pop.

Debut album Everything Touching garnered plenty of critical acclaim (listen to it above on Spotify), but this a three piece that needs to be seen to be truly appreciated.

Dry the River - Saturday @ Electric Ballroom

One day later and our first Saturday recommendation is Dry the River. A collage of pastoral folk and 'impassioned rock', the London group's 2012 debut Shallow Bed saw them ready to bring their whimsical grooves imbued with frontier spirit to the masses; check out  'No Rest' below.

ABC - Saturday @ Koko

Picking arguably the most well known act of the festival might not reveal too much in insider territory, but that doesn't mean one of the finest groups from the 80s should be ignored just for the sake of being obscure.

The group behind the majestic The Lexicon of Love (listen below) remain as fantastic examples of pop music at it's most sublime, with the arrangement and instrumentation of each of their subsequent releases considerably more sophisticated than many of their musical peers.

Their headline stint at Koko on the Saturday is the perfect way to bow out of a couple of days of fantastic music. 

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