Multiple Venues, Brighton

Having previously taken place in London and Seattle, this Wire-created and curated festival arrived in the South Coast city of Brighton to provide five days of music based loosely around the theme of the post-punk pathfinders’ ongoing influence.

Aided by the local know-how of promoters One Inch Badge, this festival embraced the notions of eclecticism and creative hyperactivity which define the band in question, and thanks to a hugely varied line-up with leftfield appeal, Drill was every inch an urban ATP.

Punctuating the internationally-celebrated titans with a generous helping of rising UK acts meant an array of bands approached Drill on once-in-a-lifetime form, knowing this was their chance to share a bill with icons, and to pay the next generation’s homage to Wire.

The event seared into life on Wednesday with a low-key but high-octane opening party at Sticky Mike’s that welcome the aggressive sonic propulsions of Transatlantic brothers from other mothers God Damn and Big Business, both of whom left little breathing space between their bottom-end battery.

But it was on Thursday that Drill really opened for business, with seven venues to pick liberally from. Local noiseniks Bad For Lazarus rattled through a tightly-fitted set of psych-tinged, murky rock ‘n’ roll that alongside fuzzed out indie lot Telegram gave a decent early insight to the weekend’s offerings.

It was also a night that saw the men of the hour Wire make their first appearance of the festival, around the corner in the refined Sallis Benney Theatre. They delivered an entrancing set, etching out an undulating, expansive performance that gradually unfurled with the addition of the Pink Flag Guitar Orchestra, bringing into stark focus all the fearless lust for evolution that makes this band such reason for celebration, almost 40 years on from their blueprint-mapping debut.

To close the day on a milder note, The Hope saw Jesca Hoop armed with a solemn acoustic, playing out a set of delicately crafted alt-folk to a room bustling with people taking shelter from the night’s cold, with their sights set on the remainder of the weekend.

To Friday, where Bad Breeding made the low-ceilinged basement of Audio their own. Like Pissed Jeans at their most misanthropic and confrontational, their set was a riotous shot of pent up frustration and tightly wound, distortion-lusting bursts of angst from a seriously promising young band.

Along the seafront and into the Victorian sea facing venue that is the Concorde 2, where Warp signee LoneLady offered something quite different. Entrancing frontwoman Julie Campbell led her group of backing musicians through a set that mixed Gang Of Four and ESG style funk-fuelled post-punk with New York styled disco and served to nestle among the lineage between the weekend’s curators and tonight’s esteemed headliners.

It’s over 18 months since Savages’ debut full-length Silence Yourself arrived as an unyielding and welcome jolt to British music’s nerve endings, and while intrigue around them has never wavered, tonight focus was very much on the next chapter in the history of one of the country’s most vital bands. They disowned many of the songs that made up the script from previous tours, and instead presented one that was largely unknown. Amidst their signature gothic atmospherics and jerky drama, Jenny Beth and co fired out a taut set of songs at a frantic pace, post-punk with a sinewy squall. Thrilling.

Saturday welcomed home AK/DK, whose abstract electronic pop recalls Battles but with a more driving, krauty feel and left a mark on those gathered inside The Haunt, before fellow locals Negative Pegasus leaked out a set of thunderous stoner doom that rattled with an overhanging sense of tension that at any second, things could go up a further, more pummelling notch.

Bristol A/V collective CUTS brought widescreen, dark electronic scapes which set the mood in St Bartholomew’s Church for the festival of melodrama to follow. They were quickly followed by a screening of 1977 cult Italian horror film Suspiria, with its seminal soundtrack performed live by Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin. As the abstract, sinister brilliance gathered momentum onscreen, the dynamics swelled and amounted to a very special, unplaceable merging of sound and vision.

Closing Sunday offered the most varied line-up of all. While Almighty Planets set had a hint of disco in its confident strut, it was Young Fathers, riding high on the crest of their Mercury crowning, who turned heads with an exuberant mid-afternoon performance inside The Haunt. Understandably confident and boisterous, a wealth of tracks from Dead were fired from the stage in celebratory fashion.