Review: Glastonbury 2016, Friday

I wake up after the inevitable over excitement of Thursday night with a sore knee and grim news of Brexit. Still, the sun has come out and there are worse places to face these tribulations.

There’s just time to cook up a couple of chipolatas, piece together the key items strewn around the van, mix some gout (brandy and port- festival essential), rouse a wing man and head to the pyramid stage for Skepta.

It all happens so quickly. He rushes on stage with most of the BBK crew in tow – Jammer and Frisco riding in on bikes – and launches straight into the title track of last month’s eagerly anticipated Konnichiwa album.

Joined by Shorty throughout, he rattles through most of the album, an LP which already has the feel of a seminal work of the time. His searing, sneering lyrics are delivered slickly and with the swagger of a man at the top of his game and the spearhead of the resurgent grime scene.

While Skepta performs each track with swagger and confidence, in the occasional gaps between them he has the look of someone a bit overwhelmed by the experience or perhaps just a bit confused by the crowd in front of him.

The shuddering baselines and Skepta’s punched out lyrics- aggressive, arrogant, acerbic, anti establishment but also thoughtfully and self analytical- are as fresh and unmistakably British as any sound in the land and make him one of the most important artist in the country right now.

And then as abruptly as it had started, all too quickly it is over. The sun disappears and the skies open. I run for the cover of my van and then head back out, this time with no wing man. I’ll go for a solo stomp. Quite liberating.

I pass through the dubbed out funk of Swindle in the Sonic and head for Protoje at West Holts. Lazy, roots reggae, arms waving in the fragile afternoon sun, the lion of Judah and a fluttering Jamaican flag behind him.

Then more reggae at Shangri-la, where DJ Derek’s old friend Aidan Larkin plays tribute to him with a minidisk set of some of Derek’s favourite tunes.

Ronnie Spector is at the Park Stage, all septuagenarian twinkling naughtiness as she works through some classics including I’d Much Rather be with the Girls, written with Spector in mind by Keith Richards back in 1965 but never recorded by her then, Baby I Love You and Do I Love You before finishing with a suitably rousing Be My Baby.

I need to regroup back at my camp in Silver Hayes. Smith & Mighty (who’ll be playing on the Bristol24/7 stage at Brisfest next month) are on at The Blues. As I walk through, Peter D Rose is banging out Meditation Time, Navigators grimy drum’n’bass steppa, while Joe Peng hypes the crowd.

After several hours of regrouping we head off to Shangri-La, a walk filled with the endless disappointments of the one-way system. We get there in time for a rowdy, bass heavy 4.30 set from Bristol’s New York Transit Authority and Kahn (also on Bristol24/7‘s stage at Brisfest).

It’s packed, at least until another downpour thins out the crowd, and it’s a suitably raucous set as the sky lightens and the long walk seems worthwhile. NYTA and Kahn are followed by My Nu Leng with an equally energetic, genre-straddling set. Then there’s just time for a bit of Congo Natty in The Cave, and the obligatory pop in to Maceo’s in Block 9 to see who’s left before the stumble home.