A day that began amidst frustration, jostling angrily with a recalcitrant laptop, ended entirely satisfactorily, jostling good naturedly over a drinks bill with Ryan, CEO of Pitchfork. Such is the unexpected nature of In The City.

Delays to daytime panel schedules [see picture] were forgotten the moment the music started, and I paid a visit to Matt from Pigeon Post, who was DJing at Soup Kitchen in between a series of unsigned bands who scrabbled for attention. We stood sardine-like and witnessed Sissy and The Blisters’ grunting thrash-garage.

Having bumped into the lovely and endlessly enthusiastic Youthless more times than I can remember, I visited and then reluctantly sloped away from Young British Artists’ packed-out show at the tiny Castle Hotel.

D/R/U/G/S proved to be the antidote to any worries anyone cared to mention. Watching them live and resisting the urge to draw extremely favourable comparisons with Orbital was a strain I could not bear.

Brilliant, boisterous and deft, their remix of Egyptian Hip Hop‘s Rad Pitt launched the assorted members of EHH standing beside into swoons of teen pleasure. No Age were superlatively good, but you knew that anyway.

And so to Thursday. ANBAD will be blogging some of the panels again – the ones that snag my interest, at least, and attending the recording of Steve Lamacq’s roundtable with Guy Garvey and Peter Hook. Then, as yesterday, I’ll be semi-lucidly Tweeting about tonight’s bands. Keep ’em peeled.

Read Wednesday’s Liveblog (that broke ANBAD for about three panicky hours) here

(Two) More Photos:

The brilliant D/R/U/G/S

Sissy and the Blisters