Beacons Day Three @ Heslaker Farm, Skipton, 18 Aug

Somehow, it’s the third day of the festival, and while many are haggardly packing up their tents (what’s left of them, at least) to leave ahead of the Monday rush, those sticking out the ongoing bacchanalia are treated to a glorious day of more psychedelia and, remarkably, sunshine. Maybe Stealing Sheep and Melody’s Echo Chamber really did summon better weather yesterday. Maybe.

Pondering the changeable climes over a clutch of nachos (Notorious P.I.G., come to The Skinny offices please, yer meats are missed) beside the You Need To Hear This stage, we’re inexorably pulled into its convulsive whirlwind of sound. That’d be The Wytches, kickin’ up a cloud of noise in the most consistently on-the-money tent all weekend. Blisteringly cathartic, this Brighton downer-psych foursome belch out chunky riffs to a sunbaked congregation, and lead singer Kristian Bell’s voice – hitching sometimes towards Isaac Brock, sometimes to Alex Turner, but mainly with its own screechy, tortured quality, Crying Clown being the standout track – carries the performance along with gutsy gusto.

Cider in hand, we traipse o’er soggy grass and hay bales to mainstay main stage Loud & Quiet, for Moon Duo’s afternoon slot. The space is, confusingly, manned by three performers, but that's only because Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada have brought in Canadian drummer John Jeffrey to lend their hypnotics a welcome live rhythm section. The original duo (one warlock beard, one choppy dark fringe) bring the big guns on their own, though, with their meaty, organ-style synthesiser and skittery guitar – and they lope determinedly through linear, warbling tracks. The tent is only half full, however, and the crowd noticeably thins as time goes on – for some, Moon Duo's dark audio-sorcery might seem bordering on monotonous; this ain’t the sunny music they were hoping for.

[Moon Duo by Richard Manning]

Beacons has done very, very well at mixing both electronic and analogue acts in its billing. So it seems right that only moments before the weekend’s decidedly indie final headliners, Django Django, we’re pumped and ready thanks to a slick DJ set from SBTRKT – among his expected repertoire, the masked London artist also drops a bit of HudMo and James Blake; an unanticipated highlight.

Once Django Django do finally stride on stage (with matching zig-zag outfits quite possibly stolen from Kraftwerk on a Bowie buzz), the air of anticipation is electric. A simple celebratory finish to proceedings becomes a symbolic one, as Irish vocalist Vincent Neff announces that not only is this their last festival this year, it’s their last UK gig of the previous 18 months until further notice. So the boys really give it some welly, and the crowd responds in kind, a monster of a moshpit swarming at the front. Adhering loosely to the structure of their eponymous LP, their nerdy, desert-journey music is gifted scale and vim in a live setting, and kinetic turns from Default, Storm, and particularly WOR render the fans batshit mental: everyone’s channelling last-day-mania. An enthused Skies Over Cairo and Silver Rays end the weekend on an exotic high; the day is won. [George Sully]

[Django Django by Richard Manning]

Leeds natives Sky Larkin bring the Sunday of Beacons to life, their vibrant indie rock resonating around the arena, giving weary 1pm-ers a startling wake-up. Responsible for twanging bass, Sam Pryor cuts an animated figure, while Katie Harkin serenades and chirps. It's a high-energy set, with crunching chords and crashing cymbals, and Harkin distributes light banter amid her soothing sing-song. Their performance is immaculate, but their set does start to drift into the land of monotony; this doesn't mean it doesn't end with thumping applause, though.

As punters everywhere but Skipton are likely to be digging into their Sunday roast, Manchester-born London resident Floating Points takes to the Resident Advisor stage following Fatima's sunny R&B grooves, in an Eglo Records-influenced sequence of acts. There must be something in the air; just previously at The Social, Manchester collective So Flute were delivering knee-bending vibes to a sun-soaked crowd. This theme continues as Sam Shepherd – student of neuroscience by day – proves his worth as a creative soul. His taste spans much more than just disco; to the crowd's delight, he waits for opportune moments to drop jazz and 1970s funk gems.

[Theo Parrish by Nick Bojdo]

Next up on Resident Advisor's stage are headliners Theo Parrish and Andres, playing back to back for five hours. FIVE HOURS. This is a performance from two legends: Parrish began producing his own tracks from the age of 13, and was heavily involved in Detroit's underground music scene, while 'DJ Dez' Andres, formerly DJ for Slum Village with J Dilla in the 90s, developed his skills in hip hop and scratching. Andres begins their epic set, throwing out funk, while Parrish delivers jazz-spawned house and hip hop, boasting his vast collection. The backing and forthing continues into the night as we lap up our final evening at the festival; at the stroke of 11pm, Parrish stops spinning to the heartbreak of his faithful crowd, who're hopelessly chanting "One more tune!" He eventually gives in, pulling a record out to the roar of the audience – only to be shot down when it becomes clear the sound has already been cut off. No matter: this evening, Parrish and Andres brought their Chicago and Detroit roots to Skipton, and it was an 'I was there' moment. [Edwina Chan]

Sunday afternoon is developing into something of a Liverpool Psych Fest warm-up, with a scuzzy Moon Duo preceded by returning homie heroes Hookworms, the word of their ferocious set in a tent no bigger than a cowshed at last year's Beacons obviously having spread enough for them to be upped to the main stage in front of 3,000. Their longtime fans are baying and first-timers are open-mouthed; but the five-piece's trademark wall of noise – built up on slabs of bloodied, scythed guitar and frontman and keyboardist MJ's ear-splitting screams – suffers somewhat from the sheer size of the space, the abraded, acidic edges of Pearl Mystic's more bludgeoning cuts being blotted by the natural reverb of the big-top roof. In Our Time and Since We Had Changed lose none of their low-blow power, however, and more apparent than ever is Hookworms' masterly balance of formlessness and form; every extended coda of reversing, inverted squall is bolted in place by considered melody and a firm grasp of when to hold back.

[Hookworms by Richard Manning]

It's hard to pinpoint at exactly what point during Danny Brown's easy ownership of the Loud & Quiet stage that the audience lose their minds in totality, but we think it might be Lie4, where his “thunder – fuckin' – storm” precipitates real-life judders as the tent shudders into action, the rapidly swelling crowd calling, responding and fist-pumping the sweaty air as hundreds rush in. Absent for the first 10 minutes, Brown bull-runs on to stage, body-popping and gurning into the photo pit's clamouring cameras, his clownish stage antics offset by his spittle-flecked patter.

The pinnacle of the night, though, has to be James Holden over on the Red Bull Music Academy's miniature stage-truck-trailer-box thing, where, from a vantage point over an open-air crowd corralled by hay bales and lit in multicolours, he removes the title of Best Drop of the Night from SBTRKT – who, only half an hour earlier, slyly detonated James Blake's Retrograde – with a hysteria-inducing deployment of Koreless's Sun; half of us fall to the floor, eyes closed, arms around each other, as though swimming in the track's blue and white surf. As that needling, pinpoint synth climbs skywards and the barrelling, unbuttoning drums turn in, it's one of those unrepeatable collisions of the right time, the right place, and the right people. Goodnight Beacons – see you next year. [Lauren Strain]

We also saw: a shoulder-mounted beer-staff duel mid-Django Django, Childhood chillin’ outside You Need To Hear This in the afternoon sun, a man in the middle of the crowd quietly considering the Resident Advisor dome's relentless house music from the comfort of his own chair, and lots of detritus.