Returning to the hipster, gentrified wasteland of north-east London for a third year, the Hackney Wonderland Festival has grown in relevance since its 2014 inauguration. A combination of cheap tickets, well-established venues and a high average disposable income within the local area always leads to packed out crowds. This year the organisers went with a potent mix of exciting new bands and established (but still relevant) veterans of the mid-noughties indie scene.

We Are Scientists fit neatly into the latter, and unlike the majority of their contemporaries, they retain a fierce loyalty to their crowd-pleasers. Nestled between borderline observational stand-up comedy from Keith Murray and Chris Cain, ‘The Great Escape’, ‘After Hours’ and ‘Nobody Move, Nobody Gets Hurt’ each harvest a fierce response from the revellers.

Meanwhile, Swim Deep are a band that find themselves in a type of purgatory. With the inclusion of multi-instrumentalist James Balmont in the line-up, their second LP was a drastic sonic improvement on their debut. However, they still seem to be attracting the teenage crowd fixated on the early sun-drenched singles, with their heightened musicianship going under-appreciated. This festival served as a release for the five-piece to perform to an audience of impartial observers who lapped up the Birmingham group’s brand of Balearic acid house and catchy synthetic rhythms.

Brighton was represented by grungers Demob Happy and psy-rockers White Room. The former promptly ripped through a set of sleazy guitar and impassioned vocals, whilst the other locals brilliantly channelled Storm in Heaven-era Verve along with the psych freak-outs witnessed in The Stone Roses. They carry all of the positive characteristics of UK alternative rock, without any of the testosterone-filled pretentiousness associated with it. Bristol-based The Shimmer Band earlier took to the main stage to exhibit their explosive brand of psychedelia before Electric Child House did their best to channel alternative rockers The Music.

Mystery Jets were Saturday’s headliners in what was a show that happened to also be the final date of their UK tour. The unconventional band are now five albums deep and can call upon a vast array of definitive hits ranging from epic prog compositions to synthetic floor fillers. The likes of ‘Two Doors Down’, ‘Young Love’ and ‘Half in Love with Elizabeth’ que wild sing-alongs before more rhythmically inclined production such as ‘Serotonin’ and ‘Flash a Hungry Smile’ turn the Oval Space into an impromptu nightclub. Recent LP Curve of the Earth was also well represented, with ‘Bubblegum’, Telomere’ and ‘Bombay Blue’ sounding more epic when placed into a live environment.

Paul Hill