Connect 2008 Episode I: Ladytron's first Scottish festival

After Ladytron's first song, Glasgow-born singer Helen Marnie says that this is - incredibly - their first Scottish festival appearance. But then again, when you take a mental tally of what Ladytron amount to, it's perhaps not so surprising. Dressed uniformly in black, on a stage decked out with eight - yes eight - synthesizers, they are a defiantly cold, festival-unfriendly band. If there was a state-sanctioned pop group in the former Soviet Union, Ladytron would be that band. OK, that metaphor rests mostly on the spoken-word Russian language bits, but they do milk that Eastern Bloc, disco-in-a-tower-block kinda vibe. In this big, expansive Highland setting, their rich electro-pop is pretty unemphatic, but when they do raise their game, with Seventeen (a song guaranteed to make you feel old) and set-closer Everything You Touch, they show they can sound pretty great.

The Skinny's got its Bolshevik fix for the day, so it's off for a pint and a wander over to the Speakeasy Tent, where we find Edinburgh-based singer/songwriter Alex Cornish serenading an intimate space full of sofa-hugging indie kids. Despite the basslines from the other stages wafting in, Cornish endears himself with his lilting guitar picking and charming personality. Even Serge Pizzorno of Kasabian fame posing for the snappers round the corner can't put him off.