Beacons Day One @ Heslaker Farm, Skipton, 16 Aug

Funkirk Estate opens its gates to a meteorologically confused population on Friday afternoon, as both the trendily dressed and the silver sci-fi costumed gather to sample the carefully curated Beacons festival line-up. The sun is holding out, the pulled pork is damned good, and there’s a waddling parade of sozzled penguins squawking at each other: let’s do this.

Egyptian Hip Hop give the Loud & Quiet stage a good basting, layering their progressive guitar work over rotary beats and bass throbs. Frontman Alex Hewett strides languidly before absorbed onlookers, and his vocals – only occasionally veering into a jarring yowl – boast a dexterity reminscent of Mars Volta’s Cedric Bixler-Zavala. It’s a strong offering from the weekend’s main stage, and the band's sunny, afrobeat-tinged closer gets us jiving.

Returning to Loud & Quiet for the evening’s shenanigans (after leaping about in the inflatable Disco Jump for longer than permitted – it’s as exciting and exhausting as it sounds) reveals technical issues for scheduled Surrey act Vondelpark. Their 45 minute slot is criminally cut down to a mere 20, but the three-piece waste no time in pulsing out their concussive bass and teardrop guitar licks. With a captivating lightshow complementing their swooping repertoire, this brief set is an engaging one (those watching carefully might spot the boys swapping instruments, Mad Hatter’s tea party style), and there’s nary a static body in sight.

[Vondelpark by Nick Bojdo]

Highlight of the day goes to urban spectre Ghostpoet, whose dubby, sputtering backing and authoritative, smoky vocals win over the night-time revellers with ease. With such considered instrumentation, even forgiving one speaker shorting out mid-song, it’s an irresistable performance, and lead word-slinger Obaro Ejimiwe spits his rhapsody with steely confidence. The show is jubilant, haunting, and bloody catchy; as the man himself huskily announces, “We ain’t got time. We got to move.” Cracking.

It’s a damn shame, then, that Loud & Quiet’s headliner suffers so badly from volume issues. Bonobo – band in tow – dazzles those close enough to enjoy the bass, his exotic arrangements silken and jazzy; but for the most part the set’s levels, which are usually so characteristically delicate, are poorly calibrated and much is muffled and lost. Even Andreya Triana, this tour’s guest female vocalist, is sonically marooned until the techies get their act together and tweak the sound two-thirds of the way through the performance. The increasingly despondent – and thinning – crowd is at last reinvigorated and Simon Green’s polyinstrumentalist outfit artfully plays out the night, swinging from classy, melodic woodwind and sophisticated beats to hyper space-age laser dub. Just about saves the night, but the dissatisfaction of earlier troubles still rings in some ears. [George Sully]

[Bonobo by Nick Bojdo]

A man called Ross protests, “but Elizabeth, Elizabeth, I love you” as we queue for the Portaloos before Fucked Up; he thinks we're Liz, then Ann, then Katy, then, er, Peter, and apparently we left him but he wants us back and if only we'd see how he's done out the bathroom – it's got a space shuttle in it – we'd come home. If our faces are transmogrifying as quickly as the seconds pass, then god knows what he sees when he gawps at Fucked Up's uncompromising frontman Pink Eyes; frothing at the nostrils, and at one point festooned in a carmine-red wig made of scissored strands, Damian Abraham is doing, well, what Damian Abraham does, rampaging and bulging and eyeballing. It's an unforgiving set prefaced neatly by an earlier appearance from Leeds act Nope: with the shared heritage of staunch DIY noise outfit That Fucking Tank and Cowtown, as well as Mucky Sailor and Garfunkle and Simon, they're a guaranteed blitzkrieg, aggressive but melodic and an unexpected highlight of the afternoon.

[Fucked Up by Richard Manning]

While Vondelpark's aforementioned technical hitches delay them by half an hour, leaving them time, disappointingly, to ghost through just four songs, over on the You Need To Hear This stage Dan Croll's set is a masterclass in delivery with his pitch-perfect chorale behind him. His schtick is slick but full of heart, and Compliment Your Soul elicits hooting and howling from a loosened dinnertime crowd high on sundown and, erm, Red's True Barbecue. It's impressive that for an artist so early into his career (the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts graduate is just 22), his set already feels like a collection of hits. We're expecting breakthrough single From Nowhere at the close, but instead he reels it off two tracks in like it's nothing, the slams of its rambunctious, slip-sliding chorus like a drunken skater smacking the sides of the rink. Latest single In/Out is a tonguetwisting singalong, a giddy piece of language-play; “This one's sexy,” Croll winks as he introduces Thinking About You, looking out at a crowd of sweaty Robocops, sequinned lions and a dude in Kanye shades with two Christmas baubles hanging from his flies (it's the fancy dress Future Disco dance-off in a minute, and the bloke dribbling down his silver lamé onesie is not going to win). [Lauren Strain]

London duo Big Deal tease the audience with a prolonged drone before exploding into their introductory track – the sum of its quarter parts, matching in harmony. The Loud & Quiet tent stands half full, but the onlookers' gazes are knowing; it's no accident that they've ended up here. Cheers greet songs from the band's most recent record June Gloom; and if this album is a testament to the great British weather, then it couldn't be more wrong – the clouds have cleared, and all that can be seen upwards is a sharp hue of sky blue. One thing Big Deal are getting right though, is their immaculate timing and tone, and their mixture of grunge-pop and dreamy vocals is well received as Alice Costelloe delicately chimes her way through In Your Car with encouragement from bandmate Kacey Underwood.

[Big Deal by Richard Manning]

Thumpers, meanwhile, are responsible for racing heart rates as their feelgood performance causes bodily spasms to ripple through the modest You Need To Hear This tent. Marcus Pepperell, responsible for vocals, guitar and violent limb movements, sings in a tone not dissimilar to that of Jonathan Higgs of Everything Everything – but more buzzed, as if he’s just downed six espressos.

Pre-tea time (not dinner time, because we are not down south), the Resident Advisor tent’s guest is Leeds-based Aartekt, made up of Liam Wachs (of Wachs Lyrical) and John Williamson. Their set brims with house beats and cyclic rhythms – perhaps ones more suitable for 2am at a heaving club. Despite them beginning with a crowd comprising groups sat paying minimal attention, a trio of dancers who come to greet Aartekt at the railings cause passers-by to mimic them – and suddenly the tent has become its own early evening club. These punters are in their own Resident Advisor bubble, where time is superfluous. Later, vinyl connoisseur Move D (aka David Moufang) – spinning tracks since the 90s – is RA's penultimate visitor. Moufang's set is house-heavy with somewhat repetitive tones, and though he does hint at (almost expected) disco, he takes it back down to the previous, unvaried measures. He succeeds in spinning tracks that make hands go up and bodies shake, sure – but are they doing so because of what they're hearing, or because they're simply dancing to continue the festival vibe?

[John Talabot by Nick Bojdo]

The stage's main event is Barcelona’s own John Talabot. His much acclaimed 2012 album fIN saw him tour with The xx earlier this year, but tonight it isn't his own material the eager audience are experiencing. His DJ set is heavily house influenced; like his predecessor this evening, he can't help but bring the audience up and down at his will by giving hints of unfamiliar pulses, which see us pounding our fists into the air with more zeal. Billed as tonight's headliner, Talabot proves worthy of the spot. [Edwina Chan]

We also saw: one unconscious tiger, Oneman, and more skin-tight neon onesies than a UV Morph party.