Crazy Suffolk weather here at Latitude today (July 19): Fiercely hot sun, followed swiftly by fast paced mini 'storms' of rain, plus a rainbow! Plenty of running back and forth to tent to switch from wellies to flip-flops! The festival is being swayed by the sounds of Sigur Ros, Elbow and The Coral, but here are a few snapshots to give you a taste of what it's been like...

Guest blogger Terry Staunton has been eavesdropping on the conversations of others to discover just what Latitude punters are talking about... 1. "You'll love Franz Ferdinand. They're like Talking Heads with just the right amount of Herman's Hermits." 2. "She's bawling her eyes out and queueing for cider - like that's gonna help." 3. Woman on phone telling her friends where to meet her: "I'm directly beneath the cloud that looks a bit like Cyprus." 4. "Daryl would be the perfect employee if he wasn't so unreliable." 5. "The problem with buying wine from a tent is that you've no way of telling if it's at room temperature." 6. "I just wish we could turn the clock back two hours. It's not like I'm asking for a big miracle. 7. Come on, we're off to see Russell. Make sure you've got the Santa hat." 8. "If Girls Aloud were here, I reckon at least two of 'em would have shat themselves by now." 9. "If anyone here was gonna freak out and go on a killing spree, I'd put money on it being Sebastian." 10. "Pimms me up to the power of two!" More to come later in the weekend... TERRY STAUNTON

Back here at Latitude, then. We’ve been burned today. We’ve been drenched today. We’ve accidentally seen a bit of Beth Rowley as well. But – and this is purely my personal opinion – I’ve also just seen the best band of the festival thus far. As any regular readers of my Wild Mercury Sound blog will have heard from me too many times to mention, I’m a very big fan of a quartet from Kendal called Wild Beasts. Without regurgitating the dozen blogs I’ve previously written about them, they’re a delirious hybrid of brittle early ‘80s UK indie and the lusher, more exotic sound of The Associates. I’m reminded constantly, listening to their awesome debut “Limbo, Panto”, of The Smiths; the strange and romantic side of The Smiths, plus the hesitant, fey dabbling with funk that opened up certain possibilities circa “Meat Is Murder”. This is how Wild Beasts sound today: an immensely self-conscious, but immensely successful take on the English eccentric pop tradition. The singer, Hayden Thorpe, looks like a Brideshead Revisited extra who has inexplicably come to the ball in a pair of shorts. He has a gravel-tinged falsetto, your tolerance of which will depend on how much of this extraordinary band you can stand. Marvellously, there’s another great singer in their ranks – bassist Tom Fleming – who has a soaring croon which would be praised to the heavens if he were the lead singer of any other band. He, incidentally, is wearing a vest and some kind of scarf wrapped round his head, like a half-hearted pirate. The guitarist has a waistcoat and no shirt, and plays like Johnny Marr at his most fragile and experimental. The drummer favours bounce and clip-clopping rhythms. The whole thing is preposterous, but wonderful; an extravaganza of sexual intrigue in non-league football, with lyrics like the discreetly infamous “chips with cheese as an offering of peace”. Songs waltz, twist and generally amaze. Some of them – “Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyant” – could be hits, though possibly only if they’d be released to a hitherto unacknowledged clutch of indie kids in 1935. Oh, and they sing “For You’re All Jolly Good Fellows” to us, which is very kind, and charmingly affected. Simply thrilling, honey.

So, as ever with Latitude, there's as much fun to be had after the official events of the day have wound down... Guilty Pleasures has become something of an institution here, taking over the Comedy Arena at 10.30pm for three hours of Queen, Dolly Parton, and your auntie's favourite soft rock classics. You can argue, of course, that there's no such thing as a guilty pleasure -- hey, what you like is what you like, regardless of consensual opinion, right..? Certainly, there's plenty of people who were doubtless earlier sampling the multifoliate delights of, say, Julian Cope, Franz or Black Kids, who're now kicking back to Salt-n-Peppa or the Pointer Sisters. And a bunch of semi-naked men of a certain girth strut their stuff on stage. If Guilty Pleasures has become a branded event here at Latitude, it's the smaller events lurking in the woods that offer the most surprises -- in the Sunrise Arena, or the Aspall Cyder area, or just something random that you stumble across, like Brigadoon, that's vanished the next morning. I find, variously, three different parties in the woods, each playing entirely different music (one indie; one drum 'n' bass; one techno) to a bright-eyed, smiling crowd who meander merrily from party to party. The trees are lit up in yellows and greens, calling to mind the sleeve of Echo & The Bunnymen's Crocodiles album. Talking of sleeves, word also reaches us of a Sleeveface party on the Lake stage. The Literary and Poetry Arenas are also still running late into the night -- I catch the end of John Niven reading from his scabrous music industry satire, Kill Your Friends, and Irvine Welsh, who treats a post-midnight audience to some excerpts from his new novel, Crime. There's even a poet on late, who begins one ode: "Heather Mills McCartney, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love the way you walk..." Anyway, it's started raining (though John confidently predicts it'll blow over), and I'm going to head off in the direction of the Radio 4 Arena. Later, there's Just A Minute -- and I wonder whether Nicholas Parsons is here yet..? Maybe he's camping..? Maybe he was at one of the woodland raves last night. Ah, probably not.

Since, with a fairly grim inevitability, I'm the first of the Uncut massive to be up and about, the first highlights top ten of the festival falls to me, it seems. Doubtless some of my colleagues will hack in later in the day and change this. But as of 11.10am, here's our favourite things about the first day here: 1. Julian Cope's preposterous set. When the sound cuts off, he memorably yells, "Children, tell your grandchildren that men like me once walked the earth!" Unbelievable. 2. Ross Noble leading several thousand comedy fans in a riotous conga to a veggieburger van. Crowdsurfing ensues. 3. Franz Ferdinand, chipper in the rain. We especially loved the '40s-style cartoon backdrop and, of course, the deathless "Take Me Out". 4. Crystal Castles. Last year it was New Young Pony Club, this year the Canadian electropunk duo bring the rave to the tranquil Sunrise Arena in the woods. 5. Black Kids. An immensely popular Clash/Cyndi Lauper hybrid. Who knew? 6. A wet and rampant crowd storming the comedy tent before the Guilty Pleasures club officially opens. Sorry about disrupting the dance routines rehearsal! 7. Boat rides on the lake. Still lovely, and we're admiring the Pimm's bus parked nearby, too. 8. Michael Nyman playing his score to "The Piano" and looking like Sam The Eagle from The Muppets. Tremendously classy. 9. Radio 4's fancy lightshow on the lake at night. Advertising isn't usually so aesthetically pleasing. 10. Paul Merton eating a baked potato. Truly, the Gods are human. . .

There’s something vaguely ironic about a group from a predominantly arid country like Mali attracting a massive crowd because it starts raining. But Amadou & Mariam deserve nothing less. Over on the main stage, Franz Ferdinand are battling on as the rain gets steadily heavier. A good few of their audience, however, are speeding into the Uncut tent, where the blind Malian duo are just beginning to get into the swing of their set. If you’ve never come across Amadou & Mariam before, they’re a married couple who have taken the serpentine guitar lines and ecstatic chants of their indigenous music and given it a flash Parisian makeover. On their last album, “Dimanche A Bamako” - which I believe sold more copies than pretty much any African record ever in Europe, possibly – their lovely tunes were occasionally smothered by the cosmopolitan over-production of Manu Chao. It’s still pretty slick here, but the glorious songs and the amazing guitar playing of Amadou really come into focus. You can hear traces of the same Malian-blues crossover that fires up the mighty Tinariwen. But Amadou is a magnificently exuberant show-off, and one you suspect aspires to the sort of solo virtuosity of Eric Clapton rather than being measured against his Malian contemporaries. It sounds a bit hairy, but trust me, it works. I’m always wary of that school of thought which demands African musicians should stay in some way culturally ‘unsullied’ by Western influence, even if I’m not always enamoured with the results. The great thing about Amadou & Mariam is that they basically make pop music which transcends any hoary and patronising concepts of ‘world’ music. A good way to end a weird but satisfying day, I reckon.

I must admit, I find it hard to throw myself willingly into the arms of Martha Wainwright. This isn't necessarily anything to do with her song craft -- which is sleek, consummate, and delivered with commendable laser precision. She is, I guess, part of a lineage of perfectly respectable quality singer-songwriters who can find an equilibrium between a more benign, FM Radio 2 friendly audiences and those searching, perhaps, for something that's clearly in tune to profound emotional feelings. The crowd, then, who pack the UNCUT Arena to the gills, are inevitably older and wiser than our friends who bounced along to Black Kids. They remind me of a certain strata of Stoke Newington folk -- I half a expect a farmer's market to be erected in the middle of the tent, accommodating those seeking, say, celeriac or other seasonable vegetables. What, perhaps, is most interesting -- maybe inevitable -- is that is pertinently a female event. "I've got feelings too," says Martha, and later, "I spend my time trying to forget you." So, mothers clutch daughters, some kind of genetic message is passed on, and chaps smoke fags and monitor empty push chairs outside the tent. Headlining, meanwhile, are Franz Ferdinand, a band I've seen and thoroughly enjoyed -- particularly at a very messy Benicassim two years hence. I'm also a sucker for anyone who opens with a song whose chorus beckons: "Come and dance with me, Michael..." Anyway, here they are with a backdrop featuring 1930s style cartoons of each member -- arguably more ITMA than indie. In another point of reference, I'm inexplicably drawn to their haircuts, which predominantly resemble Bernard Sumner's at various points during Joy Division and New Order's career. Save for their drummer, Paul Thomson, whose looks like Morrissey sometime in the early Smiths. There's also something strangely stiff upper lip about them. I can imagine them going down nobly in a Noel Coward/David Lean film, plucky chaps manning the deck as the ship sinks, all hands lost. As a slow drizzle begins to fall, they do their best on the main stage. Masters of pacing, they interspace the hits with newer songs, or songs from the second album, You Could Have It So Much Better. So, "Matinee" -- dedicated to Death Cab To Cutie -- causes much mass pogoing amongst the audience, as does "Take Me Out". There's even a cover of Hall & Oates' "Maneater", just for the fun of it. Their precision is faultless, their stagecraft energised. As I drift away from Franz, I pass the Comedy Arena, where the tent -- shut off while the Guilty Pleasures dancers practice their routine -- is suddenly bumrushed by the crowd, desperate to shelter from the rain, that's beginning to come down in what you'd call buckets. Anyway, off for a gentle beer then, hopefully a rave in the wood...

Who’s that playing,” said one male member of the packed crowd at one point. “Crystal Castles,” said his friend. “But there’s nobody on the stage,” the first objected. Crystal Castles are weird, squiggly, electronic noisemakers with sporadic vocals and you could easily mistake them for DJs if just wandering through -- but don't be dissauded, they are actually modern geniuses at making fantastic modern dancefloor fillers, despite perhaps being better known for remixing others' records (Klaxons, Bloc Party) and also being remixed themselves (HEALTH). But tracks such as 'Crimewave' speak for themselves, especially in this tiny tent, tucked away in the woods. It’s not as if she hasn’t already come in from the cold critically, but Yoko Ono received definitive affirmation when Alice Glass took to the Sunrise stage and hopped, bopped and screeched her idiosyncratic way through a set as one half of the Toronto duo. The pair’s music is indebted not only to Ono but to the whole sonic ethos of early-1980s New York post-punk, fed through a very modern, or at least modish, dancefloor filter. In fact, Glass was present throughout, but so wired and unpredictable is her stage presence, never mind her singing style, that you could easily miss her in the blink of an eye. Younger fans waved glo-sticks thoughtfully provided them by their parents; stage-diving duly occurred, but no injuries were reported. But the overwhelming aftertaste was that the Canadian band simply get the old dance-punk staples right: hit them hard, and hit them mad. Twist, in other words – and SHOUT.

Let’s start at the end. Julian Cope is standing onstage in the Uncut Arena. The power has just been pulled on him for over-running. He has started half an hour late after a doomed attempt at soundchecking, played two newish songs and a bizarre medley of some old songs, sacrificed a guitar to the goddess, challenged God, Jehovah and Allah to a fight, and ended by announcing, “Children, tell your grandchildren that people like me once walked the earth.” No wonder, I suppose, that he hasn’t played a festival in years. Cope is tonight unveiling a new configuration of his sound. The band might feature old hands like Donald Ross Skinner and Holy McGrail, but initially, the musicians are playing three acoustic guitars, a drumkit, a marching band bass drum, and two Mellotrons. The repetitive, hypnotic jangles and drones are as dumb and gonzoid as the glam metal he’s been playing live these past few years, but somehow more intense and witchy. The band, by the way, mostly look like ‘80s Budgie roadies; a delightfully nuanced detail. Anyway, after a couple of these songs, they reorganise slightly for a brilliant drone-funk version of The Teardrop Explodes’ “Sleeping Gas”, with Cope leading the way bullishly on bass. After about ten minutes, he smashes his bass, sacrifices it the gods (I am paraphrasing here), goes into some absorbingly garbled rant about religion, playing with his brother and some other stuff. By now, the band are pulsing barely audibly, and Cope is hanging off his ancient climbing frame of a mic stand and appearing to start “Reynard The Fox”. This tapers out into another rant and, fantastically, he starts mimicking the crowd by aggressively heckling himself. Appearing to relent, he decides to play “Pristeen”, when the band lose power, and he’s left proclaiming his own legend to a half-cheering, half-baffled crowd. I loved it of course, not least because while Cope often talks about his music being necessarily confrontational, he rarely takes that music to an audience that isn’t immensely tolerant of his digressions. There’s a tension here that illuminates the mythological clowning, and an imagination to the rearranged music – even in that vast Jim Morrison-esque breakdown – which elevates it even further. But of course I might be in the minority thinking that.

Mildly strange afternoon here at Latitude, which culminated in what a few of us are optimistically calling the Ross Noble Riot. I was wandering across the arena when suddenly about 2,000 people came charging down the hill, as if there were a fire in the comedy tent. When they reached a veggieburger van, they all started chanting "NOBLE! NOBLE!" Ross Noble (vaguely Paul Merton's hairy stepson, if memory serves) then started jumping on the burger van, and proceeded to try and crowdsurf his way back to the comedy tent. Pretty rock'n'roll, I suppose, and rather more rock'n'roll than one or two of the bands I stumbled upon today (not a big fan of The Do, for instance, since I was never much partial to Hazel O'Connor). Anyway, apparently Noble had just ended a mass crowd rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody" with a conga out of the tent, which soon turned into a hell for leather sprint across the field. The crowd gathered outside the tent for him actually drowned out a fair bit of a self-deprecating Beth Orton set, which featured a fine version of the deathless "Katie Cruel". What else? I discovered that my Blackberry only works during comedy science shows in the children's field. I managed to arrive at the screening of Grant Gee's Joy Division film at precisely the moment when Ian Curtis died. And I also found out that while The Go! Team are still playing virtually the same show they were playing three years ago (behaving as if that so-so second album hardly existed), that show is still tremendous fun. Two drummers! Thurston Moore guitar! Cop themes and buffalo gals! A peculiar and invigorating Brighton concoction of big beat and indie! It's hard to imagine a more energising - if potentially teeth-rotting - festival band, and it occurs to me that it's something of a shame that CSS seem to have stolen some of their thunder. First great gig of the festival for me.