It seemed to come from nowhere: all of a sudden Brighton had a brand new music festival on its doorstep with a kind of ATP line-up and a bunch of the best local bands to boot. With over 100 acts performing over four days at various venues in the city, we had plenty of running around to do. Here’s our review of what we caught on the Thursday. There’s plenty more to come.

Sons Of Noel And Adrian, Audio
SONAA (pictured) kick off DRILL festival with a smaller ensemble than usual – only seven players instead of the sometimes dozen or so. However, while the band has shrunk their sound has definitely got bigger. Tonight we discover they’ve traded their former gypsy-folk style for something louder and more electric – with flavours of prog, krautrock and jazz fusion. It works to good effect, with Emma Gatrill (the band‘s other female singer is absent, at a parents’ evening apparently) providing a particularly enticing centrepiece to the whole performance with clarinet, drums and vocals which at times seem reminiscent of the Sun Ra Arkestra. Good stuff. (JS)

Scarlet Rascal, Green Door Store
Despite the paucity of crowd members, Bristol four-piece Scarlet Rascal are working the room early on at the GDS, serving up an intense atmosphere to those lucky enough to have turned up on the off chance. Frontman Luke Brook is dangerous charisma personified, offering no between-song banter and thrashing at his Burns guitar like it had insulted his girlfriend. He sings in a strange, lisping faux American accent which shouldn’t really work but does, and when his band lock into a repetitive, bass-led rhythm, only occasionally punctured by shards of his guitar, they are near unstoppable. Sadly they do have to stop though, and skulk off the stage without saying a word. Charming, basically. (JK)

Dog In The Snow, Prince Albert
A timetable clash with Wire and These New Puritans meant this show was never likely to be swarming, but the slightly awkward atmosphere isn’t helped by the band’s cold-dead stage manner. However, as Helen Ganya Brown thanks us for coming – her voice swamped by effects – it becomes clear that the Brighton duo is on the right side of the standoffish/shy divide. Eliciting extraordinary sounds from one-string guitar parts and a big pedalboard of tricks, Brown steers Dog In The Snow’s midtempo electronic ballads through a sea of reverb and sweeping synths with her gorgeous vocals leading the way. Standout track and latest single, ‘Africa’, the heavy beat and offbeat bleep giving it an almost dub reggae vibe, comes late in the set but at least gets some heads bobbing. (BB)

These New Puritans, Audio
In recent years, the Essex trio’s sonic ambitions have found them playing orchestral collaborations in halls like the Barbican, so DRILL offered a very rare chance to see them up close. Joined by Portuguese singer Elisa Rodrigues, former Bark Psychosis leader and producer Graham Sutton (back on stage for the first time in two decades) and enough antique oscillator gear to pilot a Cold War submarine, there’s not a lot of room for the audience. Jack Barnett’s a quiet singer and the band’s sparser moments get buried in the crush of the crowd but when they’re loud they force sensitive ears from the room. The simple synth pattern of ‘Organ Elemental’ offers sweet relief before TNP plunge back into the forceful rhythms of ‘Drum Courts’. Always absorbing, at its best this was heart-stopping. (SH)

The Wytches, The Haunt
To be honest, The Wytches (pictured) look knackered tonight. While they’ve come a long way musically since their early scrappy support slots around the city, we get the feeling maybe they’ve come a long way physically too. Be it because they’ve toured their excellent debut extensively over the past 10 months, or whether it’s due to, err, rock’n’roll endeavours, we don’t know – but Kristian Bell’s voice failed to lacerate as it usually does, guitars malfunctioned and cues were missed. The set-list doesn’t help either, featuring only a handful of older songs, and unusually, a couple of the slower near-ballads that work better on record. Time for a recharge maybe? (JK)

Jesca Hoop, The Hope
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” aren’t words you expect to hear from this otherwise gregarious singer songwriter. Taking her cue from the pared-back vibe of her last release, Jesca is going it alone tonight with an acoustic guitar in front of an increasingly rammed room. Halfway through she tells us that a friend once introduced her as the worst guitar player they know. That friend must know some slick players because Jesca’s high-end fingerpicking is solid and rather unique. In any case, the parts are a perfect backing for her incredible voice – all the more affecting without the shiny production of her previous recordings. However, while treating us to some new songs, Jesca flounders, her friendly banter becoming less manicured as the mistakes pile up. But you know what, it doesn’t matter. (BB)

DRILL:BRIGHTON, Various venues, Thursday 4th December 2014

Words by Ben Bailey, Jake Kennedy, Jon Southcoasting and Stuart Huggett
Photos by Jon Southcoasting and Mike Tudor

The SOURCE team covered all four days of DRILL: check out our reviews of Friday, Saturday and Sunday. There’s also more photos from the festival here.