Mojo - The Music Magazine

IT WAS ABOUT THE MOMENT that I was struggling into my all-in-one silver spandex body stocking that I realised Bestival was unlike other sweaty gatherings in rubbish-strewn fields surrounded by Thali Cafes and Hog Roasts. For six years now, Radio 1 DJ Rob Da Bank's cult gathering has aimed to furnish an "escapist" weekend, and even if the Isle Of Wight's spacious Robin Hill adventure park isn't quite, say, Chile's Atacama desert, Bestival provides more outré entertainment than you'd get at a month of V Festivals.

Saturday was fancy dress day, and this year's theme was Outer Space - hence my attempted impersonations of Marvel Comics cult super-hero The Silver Surfer, complete with silver-painted surfing (ironing) board. Anyone wishing to make an exhibition of themselves could, and did; thus Princess Leias mingled with Daleks; Ziggy clones with Mars Attacks marauders; shop-bought affairs with home-made abortions, like some cosmic Ugly Bug ball (somehow Tigger, Pac Man and Shrek's Gingerbread Men decided they were sci-fi icons too). It was the kind of festival where Bat For Lashes' Natasha Khan would have felt underdressed.

Khan was the penultimate headliner in the Big Top tent on Friday. Draped in a cape (she even does a cape costume change, never before seen in the history of rock), she prowls around much more confidently than the keyboard-bound performer of old. Perhaps it's simple stage experience, or maybe it's the competition, what with Florence & The Machine commanding the main stage earlier. You'd expect Flo to dress as the Mad Nymph from Alpha Centauri, but no, Barbarella will do; the next day, Little Boots was apparently Lady Penelope though she looked more Judy Jetson to me. Both of them, sadly, suffered from wind blight. Understandably, the stage had been relocated to an uphill-sloping field after last year's flooding, and mercifully we were treated to 24 degrees of sunshine, but the breeze still swept the sound away, waylaying all main-stagers, including MGMT (who dress like Venusians dressed by Primark *on a normal day) and headliners Massive Attack. And sloping backwards is kind to neither alien hoof nor human foot.

Fortunately the wind dropped midway through Saturday, just in time for Lily Allen. In playful, bantering mood, she has a compelling streak to match her smart songs. Klaxons too, with new songs Moonhead and In Silver Forest suiting the sea of spaced cadets, were also anthemic and beloved. As was La Roux in the big tent after midnight. Elly Jackson (for she has her own name too) appears awkward in her own skin but I didn't hear any songs all weekend get as bonkers a reception as her two singles In For The Kill (Skream's Let's Get Ravey remix was Bestival's ubiquitous tannoy soundtrack) and Bulletproof. Well, perhaps the set from Belgian duo 2ManyDJs (Soulwax's knob-twiddling alter egos) whose collage of cut-ups - including The Gossip to Nirvana to Michael Jackson - amounts to one monstrous Stars On 45 crowd-pleaser.

Saturday's main stage headliners - the mighty Kraftwerk - fared slightly less well. What in principle sounded perfect - four men acting like robots for an audience partly dressed like robots - in practice failed to compute; this audience want to dance, not watch. The 'Werk might have benefited from headlining Sunday, the traditional festival comedown after Saturday's rave, although this year that slot fell to Elbow. Singer Guy Garvey has the intimate touch that turns big gigs into parlour turns, and on Sunday he insisted everyone whistle the Star Trek theme before the band would play an encore.

Away from main stage, spread between seven dance spaces, the real spirit of Bestival is to be found. Here we encountered the Afterburner, a towering rocket-shaped DJ booth that goes on fire at opportune moments. Rob Da Bank played one of his two sets there; the other indoors at the Bollywood tent after Chicago house legend Derrick Carter. That's the kind of 'seminal' that Bestival draws on. And since dance music has as many heads as Hydra, you could catch Mercury Prize-winning rapper Speech Debelle (twice, as she was promoted to the Big Top while also honouring her original booking in the much smaller Red Bull Music Academy tent), Kid Carpet's Casio-punk juvenilia, Tinchy Stryder's pop grime or Italy's excellent mind-melt techno duo The Bloody Beetroots.

Or you could just go tobogganing, visit the Women's Institute cake stand or periodically catch The Troublemakers (average age: six), the star attraction during Beatles Rock Band hour. Bestival is that kind of festival. There is a smidgen of Latitude's family-values gentility and Green Man's folkadelia, but actually Bestival has become Glastonbury's kid brother, pushing the eclectic, manic, global-village envelope. But please, push no harder. Rob Da Bank reckons Bestival can grow even further - it started at boutique-festival level in 2004 with 6,000 tickets but this year was closer to 40,000. But any bigger and what feels like the most energised British festival of modern times - and the summer swansong to outdo all that come before it - will be in danger of mutating into something somewhat less special.

Martin "Silver Surfer" Aston