Back after a year off & positioning itself as the first UK offering of the festival season (if a year-long period can be described as a season), Rockaway Beach once again boasts a good variety of old and new acts so, on a personal level, I can see a number of potentially exciting prospects for the first time whilst taking in performances from other acts I’ve not seen for anywhere between five and 20-ish years.

Friday night’s bill perfectly illustrates that element of the event as I’ve not seen Honeyblood before but have high expectations, I haven’t seen The Orb since sometime in the ‘90s and the last Horrors gig I took in saw them still shouting & screaming, rather than performing their lusher current sound.

All of the above performed admirably - Honeyblood were an energetic opening act with plenty of chat to get the audience involved, fighting off the last vestiges of the flu in the process. The audience were pretty static but certainly knew the recent singles such as 'Babes Never Die' as the duo saved the best for last. 

The Horrors were sublime & easily the best act of the whole weekend. Given the direction they've gone over the past three albums the sound itself was obviously no surprise but the assured manner in which they now perform was an obvious step forward from the last time I'd seen them. Faris even took the time to pass on his new year resolution - to talk more and be nicer to people and then barely said a word after. Tres droll but in keeping with the overall wit of the show.

Sound-wise The Orb were a bit of an odd choice to come on next but they started off with a couple of numbers even I recognised (they've had half a dozen or so albums out since I last paid them a great deal of attention) & so they brought a solid & groove-filled end to the night which saw quite a few in the crowd loosening up in advance of Tim Burgess's closing DJ set.

Saturday's stand out performance came from Snapped Ankles, sweating themselves thinner in the smaller Reds performance space. Those ghillie suits they wear aren't I imagine that breathable. Air hockey's their game of choice it seems & the audience were welcomed to challenge them at it after the show. They bring a great deal of energy to the stage with their tribal-influenced sound, which felt a lot more immediate than on record. They'd a very good looped back projection on the go too.

Pulled Apart By Horses were the final act of this afternoon, a band I know by name but have never really made the effort to listen to. On the evidence of the show today I don't see that changing anytime soon. They're chat was pleasant enough, they're loud and pretty fast but somehow I found the whole thing unconvincing.

Into the main hall we all then trooped for British Sea Power & the apparently final festival show from Wild Beasts. BSP I've seen a number of times but tonight they seemed rather one dimensional, despite the nice foliage they'd had the stage decorated with. The rest of the audience lapped it up but I felt that each song was in the same gear, with no obvious changes in pace and whilst they had a good amount of chat I found myself largely disengaged. Wild Beasts were another act I've known of but not actively listened to so I wasn't expecting the Dutch Uncles-esque sound that came forth when they took to the stage. Again I seemed to be out of sync with the rest of the crowd so I left them to it after a couple of songs.

Sunday's highlight for me was again in Reds where punk-pop stalwart Helen Love and her band held sway for a fast, fun and frivolous set which greatly appealed to the (smaller than usual) crowd who clearly knew what to expect and loved every minute of it. It was pleasing to finally have caught a live show by the group after many years of enjoying their output.

I've never 'got' Alabama 3 & tonight's show from them brought me no nearer to doing so. I presume the bouncer on stage during their Blues Brothers-esque performance is part of their schtick. They can't have been worried about stage invaders, given the age and condition of the bulk of us watching. I'd last seen the band at Rockness in 2008 but at least there there was another stage or tent in which to seek entertainment. No such option this time around so I ended up taking the short walk into Bognor Regis itself in search of an ale.

Whilst the event has introduced interview features in the bar during the afternoons as well as films each day (which I presume were chosen as much for the music in them as the stories) the problem it suffered from in the main was that of being more like three all-dayers in a row rather than a proper festival. When last here in 2015 there were three stages with acts overlapping each other so you could wander from one to the other, see more & have more chance of viewing a whole set. This year there was no overlap so you either stuck around or wandered off back to your apartment or to eat and/or drink (or to play the tuppenny falls). Given that there were fewer bands than three years ago this was probably though the only way to operate things.

Making it back with more time to kill than necessary it was handy that Peter Hook & The Light, an act it was obvious many fans had come mainly to see, came on stage around 45 minutes earlier than billed. I've been wary of this act since first reading about it and it took no time at all for my suspicion that it's an ego trip to be confirmed. Nostalgia's all well & good but if Martin Gore started fronting a Depeche Mode covers band (or tribute act depending on how you choose to word it) or Lol Tolhurst did the same for material from his time in The Cure it would have the same ring to it. Bernard Sumner doesn't really sound right singing Joy Division songs (as witnessed on the recent New Order live album) so how's the band's old bassist going to? Deciding to stick with the recorded versions of the songs in question it was bed before midnight for me. 

Over the years if an artist had released 11 albums you would have expected to have heard of them at least, if maybe not their music.

Such is the case with Eivør and I.

Having read a magazine article and had my interest piqued by the styles mentioned I looked her up on a well known streaming service and was hooked on her latest album, Slor. And it was hugely fortuitous that she was touring at the time.

Upon arriving at the elegant Voodoo Rooms, a much underused venue, it seemed a lot of people in Edinburgh had also been captivated as I was only able to sneak in at the back (next to the dancing mixing and lighting engineer).

Sporting a “warrior jacket” (huge sparkly shoulder pads) Eivør Pálsdóttir and her band produced a show that swung all over the place, both musically and lyrically with a mix of traditional drums, electric and acoustic guitars, synth from start to finish. Switching between Faroese and English, whilst hitting some hauntingly high notes, bringing to mind mystical selkies luring sailors to their deaths, this performance showcased a huge talent that not many people know of outside Scandinavia.

Songs such as 'Rain', 'Bridges' and 'Boxes' (from previous albums) are simplistic in nature but give a much more in-depth insight into Eivør's life than many artists manage over a whole career.

This Edinburgh show was the last night of the Slor tour and it showed! Final song, 'Surrender', was thrashed out in such a shoegazesque fashion that you felt they could have continued for an epic 10 minutes ala My Bloody Valentine.

A fitting end to a concert that captured all of Eivør’s mix of folk, electronic and indie styles that in most cases wouldn't work but with this artist they do. Well worth checking out.

When the York quintet took to the stage after an excellent supporting set from Cast and then Elmer Bernstein's theme to The Magnificent seven, these precursors would suggest that a very tightly packed O2 Academy in Glasgow would be entertained by both classic and nostalgic music and tonight Shed Seven wouldn't disappoint.  

Despite having released their brand new fifth studio album Instant Pleasures only less than a month earlier, only four tracks from this would make it into the epic seventeen track setlist spanning a relentless ninety minutes. The opener was one such song. It seems the norm that writers now pen tracks with the idea of it being an opener in mind and the first song from the new album was the first song of tonight, 'Room in my House'. 

Rick Witter and Paul Banks didn't have to reinvent the wheel to come up with something new, the main ingredients of Shed Seven's success were Witters knack for producing anthemic rousing choruses and Bank's ability to create a dirty blues lick that can hold you from start to finish. 

With only half of the crowd joining in the oooh-oh's that make 'Room in my House' as anthemic as it is, it creates the building blocks for the crowd to quickly get on side as the crunching guitar intro of 'Speakeasy' along with a very memorable performance of 'Where Have You Been Tonight?' are next up. 

Witter interacts with the crowd with funny anecdotes of the nineties, singling out a boo boy after a drum malfunction and social media tweets. He dedicates 'High Hopes' to a couple in the crowd who had it as their wedding song. Followed by the second song taken from Instant Pleasures, the boil begins to simmer until 'Dolphin' is given an extension with Banks recreating John Squire's outro to 'I am the Resurrection' which whips the place into a frenzy. 

'Ocean Pie', 'On Standby' and 'Devil in Your Shoes' act as the three songs that would have been hard to leave from the set, why it was probably so large, and also as a breather for Witter before what would turn out to be a grandstand eight song finish. 

The second half of the setlist begins with 'She Left me on Friday' and the Academy echoed with 2,500 sets of vocal chords and Rick Witter's were as precise and punchier as ever and even better on 'Better Man', one of the stand out tracks from Instant Pleasures. 

If singing weren't enough for the Shedecember's they also had their chance to dance as 'Disco Down' moves them into full swing, the last song wrote by Paul Banks before he decided that he had enough 17 years ago. His relentless guitar appreggios keep tempo with the mood on 'Bully Boy' and a sea of 5000 arms joining the chanting. 

Their only top ten hit in fifteen attempts from their Mark 1 era 'Going for Gold' concludes the pre-encore routine with Witter telling the crowd that he is "...going to stand over in the corner before returning to stand back here". 

The fourth song from Instant Pleasures, 'It's Not Easy' complete with their brass section would be a natural closer to any gig except 'Getting Better' and 'Chasing Rainbows' were still to be worshipped by an eagerly awaiting crowd to close out what is arguably and widely acknowledged as one of the best gigs of 2017 by a British rock band. 

Whilst band and crowd performance eventually stole the day, we still left wondering why their latest single 'Nothing to Live Down' didn't make an appearance, but with a setlist so vast in its ability to induce passion and emotion, this may be more greed than critique.

Tonight the Hartnolls took to the stage with a set-up that looked positively minimal when compared to the industrial-scale rigs of previous years. From the outset it was clear that the visual effects had not undergone similar reduction. Displays across the top and bottom of the stage created the illusion of a letterbox, through which the crowd could see the bobbing head-lights of ambient techno’s most accomplished duo.

Opening track, ‘Lush 3-1’ from 1993’s “brown” album, heralded a set that would remain primarily within the pair’s earlier works, but all reworked magnificently to sound as fresh and exciting as they did nearly 25 years ago. In some cases I had to wait for a good few bars before realising which tune was being played. For two hours, including encore, the set-list rarely ventured beyond 1996, keeping well away from the early 2000s and the much-maligned The Altogether. 

It was great to hear a couple of tracks from 2012’s Wonky, the title track off that album and particularly the encore-closing ‘Where Is It Going?’ Just to ensure the entire evening wasn’t a retrospective, two tunes had their live debuts; ‘Phuk’ and ‘Tiny Foldable Cities’, both proving that there is still plenty of cracking material in the locker. 

Given that the brothers have been producing the finest electronic dance music since 1987, their passion has not waned, even when playing classic tracks like ‘Belfast’, ‘Chime’ and ‘Halcyon’, which they could be forgiven for delivering by rote, but instead they give thumping renditions of these old favourites, bouncing around behind their kit as if they were playing a rave inside the M25, circa 1989.

 The stand-out performance of the night had to be a new mix of ‘Satan’, which was delivered with a face-melting intensity that had everyone in the place going mental. There are rumours of a tour next year and, on the strength of this latest outing I say, bring it on.