Live At Leeds is a multi-venue festival that takes over the streets of the northern city as music fans from all over the country bury themselves into the vast amount of music on offer. The festival for me starts in the Belgrave Music Hall, the popular venue that today will play host to artists such as Leeds' OtherPeoplesLives, Pet Moon and Manchester's Bipolar Sunshine.

With the sun out shining and with people in high spirits, the only place on my (and many other's) minds is Belgrave Music Hall. The roof terrace is crowded with Ray-Bans, dip-dyed hair and beards as they fill the deckchairs and school hall seats to look out onto the city’s skyline. The anticipation builds, as the wait to filter down and join the packed crowd for Disraeli Gears. Playing popular tunes such as ‘Mother I’ and ‘Skeleton’,  their set is tapered with moody atmospheric tendencies. Their alt-rock sound twist the knees of the audience into grooving with their temping blues and delicate wails. After a promising start, the idea of taking a gentle stroll down to Oporto isn’t too taxing. York locals Glass Caves take to the stage and quickly have people queuing out of the door to show their support. Like turning up to a party without an invite, the queue outside peer through the glass window to listen in on the muffled noise created by Glass Caves.

After Lunch and around the corner, tucked away in the Wardrobe, the Tea Street Band fuse a tempting sound into a mix of influences such as New Order and The Happy Mondays vibes. Bringing with them a true Manchester party, they get the crowd dancing with ease as the Tea Street Band treat the audience to tracks such as ‘Summer Dreaming’ and ‘Fiesta’. London’s Shy Nature are up next to perform to a slightly weary audience. Ballroom dancing begins to couple off some audience members in some weird act of pleasure to track ‘Sinking Ship.’  The intimate setting acts as the perfect space to dance along to their indie-pop grooves.

Basking in the sunshine, the walk down from the Wardrobe to Holy Trinity Church sets the mood for New York folk singer, Gambles. Leaving the microphone and stage behind him Gambles steps away from the front and moves into the crowd. He works his way round the pews, playing heartfelt blues to the audience. His mesmerising vocals echo through the church as he stomps his black worn Chelsea boots on the floor. Astounded the audience are speechless. His tales of lost love personalised with his attentive, sentimental performance make it a true sight to see and a memorable act at this year’s festival.

Around the festival, Leeds becomes a hotspot for familiar faces; from spotting Palma Violets having a few drinks outside Wire, to King Charles enjoying watching Josh Record’s courageous vocals in the Refectory and The Midnight Beast chewing on some ribs in Red Barbecue, musician spotting becomes the perfect game for beating the long queue blues.

A bit of light entertainment is sure needed as the popularity of Royal Blood causes one of the day's bottlenecks. Hundreds of wishful thinking fans cue outside the Leeds Metropolitan SU hoping to get through the one-in-one-out system to catch a glimpse of Royal Blood’s menacing guitar sound and jump around to ‘Little Monster’ and ‘Out Of The Black’.

As the sun begins to set, Leeds University is buzzing with musical delicacies to feast your ears upon. Down in The Mine, The Wytches crawl their fingers along the guitar neck and thrash their way through an energetic set. Their bone-rattling heavy display of darkness takes a devious turn as they play through tracks like ‘Crying Clown’ and ‘Digsaw’. Their anticipated large crowd mosh and jump their way along to ominous guitar riffs and bass sounds that are clouded with dirt. Ending on a stage dive makes this performance (and the awaiting expectation of their debut album) all that more exciting.

Packing out the Brudenell Social Club, Pulled Apart By Horses close the festival. They turn the social club upside down as the crowd vigorously jump into each other, thrashing around to ‘V.E.N.O.M’ and popular ‘I Punched A Lion In The Throat’. ‘High Five Swan Dive Nose Dive’ turns the whole venue into a massive mosh-pit, flailing bodies and bruised limbs scatter about like loose change. Acting as if they haven’t witnessed 12 hours of music previously, the exhilarated audience, still sweating, plead with Pulled Apart By Horses for just one more song. Ending on ‘Den Horn’ Pulled Apart By Horses stick around for a few drinks afterwards to celebrate the closing of the 2014 festivities.

The mammoth event saw the doors to the Leeds music scene flung wide open for all to see. Playing host to the UK’s raw talent, today is bound to have afforded many people a few memories, a few bruises and a few hangovers along the way; a duvet filled, silent Sunday is all that is now left of Live At Leeds 2014. 

Leeds DIY music promoters Bad Owl, are hosting a weekend of post metal, post rock and math, bringing to Leeds another mini festival, Strange Forms. The event is being held at the Cooperative Club, Wharf Chambers, a quirky, multi-use venue hidden away near the back of the Corn Exchange.Taking place over two rooms with an outdoor smoking/sitting/sun-soaking area, it’s a real intimate affair. Twinkle lights adorns the merch stands and a cold stone smell lingers in the air, I like that smell.

Leeds band Sunwølf are the first to grace the stage, an aurally amiable wash of atmospheric noise. Gentle howls of guitar sustain a constant flow of a sleepy vibration shocked into life by crashing drum beats. The turnout is surprisingly good considering this is the first act of the weekend and my expectations for the event are instantly propelled forward, helped along by all the friendly faces and of course, the fact there is a cake stand.

My insatiable and constant hankering for cake is well fed by my new favourite (admittedly unrivalled) vegan cake maker extraordinaires - That Old Chestnut. As a vegetarian and ‘constantly failing but always trying vegan’ myself, I guiltlessly take on the task of tasting several different varieties of cake, all of which taste ridiculously yum and line my stomach well for the large amount of notably fairly priced drinks they offer at Wharf Chambers. In terms of savoury treats The Grub & Grog Shop are also present with a choice of salad, stew or a sandwich so good, I have to have a couple. Sucked into the atmosphere of food, drink and people, I mosey into the live room a much merrier version of myself to watch Glasgow’s Vasa. The chorus of black guitars spin a mixture of textured post-rock and flowing, fret-tickling tunes. The set flows as the songs meld into one another, occasionally culminating into choppy breakdowns of short, heavy riffs. Envoys are next to take over the stage with their darker, heavy rock. Mostly instrumental the songs are occasionally accompanied by fittingly strained vocals, adding a catchier element to certain areas and giving them a stronger distinction to bands of the same genre.

If topless drummers turn you on, then Polymath may have been your highlight. Impressing with their tight, math magic, this fairly new Brighton trio cast their glitchy, instrumental compositions into the mass, undoubtedly fishing a few new fans in the process - me included . The good sized crowd is something that does not change throughout the whole weekend, and as day one comes to a messy close with The Fierce & The Dead, I leave knowing I will happily power into tomorrow despite the impending hangover.

Day Two. Tomorrow We Sail are a perfect accompaniment to neurofen and sooth pounding brains, easing further into the day with angelic vocals, gentle drums and smooth violin. A beautiful balance of ambient post-rock that gently pulls you in with a serenade of floating vocals and brilliantly pulled together orchestral sounds.

Alpha Male Tea Party are the only band this weekend that I have already seen live. After previously gushing over them (I am about to do it again) I know that this quite likely, will be the highlight for me. Dressed in the most fashionable and versatile disposable clothing - dust suits, they spew their angular math rock melodies into the audience. AMTP are fun, so fun. Between inventively named songs such as ‘Boris Bike Briefcase Man’ ‘You Eat Houmous, Of Course You Listen To Genesis’ and ‘I Don't Even Like Hollyoaks Anyway’ they engage in amusing bouts of onstage chit chat and in the spirit of Easter, dedicate ‘Athlete's Face’ to Jesus Christ, the festive buggers. Once again the crowd are a well-receiving, happy bunch, sponging up all the energy of the clunky riffs and enjoying every minute. I not so secretly don’t want them to end, but they do, and it’s sad.

Leeds’ weird and wonderful Monster Killed By Laser run a corker of a set as expected. Full of juicy riffs cushioned by waving, space age echoes, they keep the tempo up for the next surprise of the night, Cleft. Along with AMTP they are the stand out band of the weekend, another intricate and creative, math rock fuelled party. This Manchester duo serve up their delicious two piece pie with monstrous grooves spliced with gentler interludes that catch you off guard. They are a galvanizing, gut tingling extravaganza of animated entertainment, coming to a venue near you...if you’re lucky.

Monsters Build Mean Robots and Codes In The Clouds end the night with two equally as good slots, pulling together Strange Forms 2014. The organisers at Bad Owl have done a splendid job overall, friendly and happy they have put on a seemingly smooth running, and thoroughly enjoyable event with a distinct and welcome lack of artist snobbery. I will definitely be back next year.

In terms of intimacy and outpouring of love for those that have come out to see you play I doubt I've ever seen a greater display of emotion than what was on display tonight, certainly not at this venue. I've definitely never seen a band wander upstairs to the balcony and serenade the audience from there anyway.

Augustines are well known for requiring extra long sleeves upon which to wear their hearts but reading about the effort they put in to connecting with crowds and witnessing it are poles apart. Amazing as that is to see what's even stranger is the crowd's resolutely static nature throughout the show, until it has to part to let Billy and the guys in to its midst to play a final couple of songs. Edinburgh still only nowadays seems to be able to offer just polite claps and a few cheers as the barnstorming tracks from 2011's Rise Ye Sunken Ships get nowhere near the level of physical participation they deserve.

The material from this year's self-titled album already sems to be well known though and overall the band are very clear on the fact that they've loved playing the show so it's smiles all round.

As the camera pulls back on Bruce Dern cradling a rabbit in a bio-dome drifting in and out of the rings of Saturn, 65daysofstatic take the stage at the Village Underground. Bass drums kick in, a switchboard crackles to life, and the live soundtrack to SF eco-fable Silent Running begins. The band wrote their own soundtrack to Silent Running with the film on loop in the background, and although the peaks and troughs of the narrative are perfectly suited to 65days’ loud/quiet formula, it’s the film’s obsession with robotics that really resonates.

65daysofstatic are a band inhabiting that blurry field between electronic and ‘live’ music (although in the 21st Century, that distinction has become rather humdrum). The four-piece from Sheffield have milked blood out of the stone of post-rock to produce some of the most exciting instrumental music around. Since 2005 they have been mixing drum kicks with sound processors, guitars with loops and arpeggiators. As such, it is apt that their latest project is a soundtrack to Seventies SF film, Silent Running, a film that obsesses about that very modern battle between nature and technology.

The Convergence Festival (of which this evening is the closing event) is an exploration of the way that technology informs modern music, and each band represents that dichotomy. Whether it’s tech-noise-niks like ‘parent-saddening’ (The Guardian) Fuck Buttons, deutsche-house veterans Booka Shade or avante-garde composer Ben Frost, at a basic level, these artists treat circuits as much a part of musical shading as a chord sequence. Although the heavy handed eco-message of Silent Running initially seems like a perverse choice for 65days - a band so reliant on electronics - in fact it perfectly represents their evolution as a band. A band writing songs as fearful of the future as they are enamoured of its technology.

There are long periods in Silent Running where the band just stand in the darkness, waiting. ‘We learned we didn’t all have to be playing all the time’, says whiz-kid, Paul Wolinski of the making of the soundtrack. Indeed during the dialogue (of which there is very little in the film, having only one human protagonist for 60% of the runtime), the entire band fade into the darkness. Take the orchestra out of the pit, and you have a rather different experience of watching a film - a jarring experience, watching soft, green lights from a soundboard illuminating a face in the dark as a piano plays and a man drives around a spaceship in a buggy, or a shadow beating hell out of drums as the meteor belt around a planet twists and spins. The hum of static from Wolinski’s Korg echoes the sight of static on the dashboard in front of Bruce Dern, as he turns all his ship’s engines off to avoid detection, like submarines did in the War.

The original score for Silent Running was mostly string-based, but featured two songs by hippie-folk-warrior, Joan Baez. 65days however, inject an element of stress into proceedings. This is no longer Baez’s wafting, acoustic ‘In the sun / like a forest is your child / doomed is his innocence’. In 2014 (six years after the film is actually set) the wordless score and crashing drums are the planets, they are the sun, and everything is falling apart. Soundtracks work best when the form mirrors the content, and 65days have made a soundtrack that both embraces this film’s dichotomy of metal and skin, and its fear of the future. Instrumental bands have a tendency to bang on about creating soundtracks for films that don’t exist yet (a poetic notion that essentially reads ‘we don’t need words’), but 65daysofstatic have built on Bruce Trumbull’s SF to create a soundtrack for a film that does exist. Every explosion on screen is accompanied by an explosion onstage, every shot of Titan is accompanied by the splash of drums that sound like the enormousness of a moon. This is a soundtrack that has turned outwards.

Over the course of the last decade, 65daysofstatic have sloughed off the post-rock guitar drudgery of 'The Fall Of Math' and fully embraced technology and music that combines all of that, and makes it better. Despite Silent Running’s protagonist’s concern that nature is more important than technology, the final scene has a piano sound-tracking a long zoom outwards (mirroring the film’s opening) as the robot ‘Dewey’ brings a battered watering can up to care for a tropical plant on a deserted spaceship, and the camera flies backwards into the vacuum. In this context, the combination of man and machine (far from being a horror, as it is in films like ExistenZ, Terminator, Metropolis), is in fact embracing that fear of a fully integrated, technological age. In a time when according to The Guardian, a third of Britons are actually afraid of The Rise Of The Robots, and Google’s newly purchased ‘Deepmind’ can now read unstructured data, and learn as it is reading it, human beings live in an age when the machines can understand people. And now the people are trying to understand the machines.