Saturday at Three Rivers Music Festival is the full-day version of what the festival has built itself to be: Dub Pistols headlining, Jaguar Skills and The Undercover Hippy earlier in the day, Fellowship of Groove and Born ina Barn on the secondary stage, and the woodland dance stage running until the early hours with Pressure, Beats on Tap, and Shack Promotions. Durrants Farm in Porchfield holds this programme well: the site is rural enough to feel like a genuine festival and compact enough that nothing is more than a ten-minute walk from anything else.
Three Rivers began as a reggae event and still carries that influence in how the Saturday unfolds: the pace in the afternoon is slower than a purely DJ-led festival, the stages have breathing room between them, and the farmland setting means the sound systems do not bleed into each other in the way urban festival sites manage badly. Saturday evening at Three Rivers, with the main stage visible from the camping field and the woodland lit at the far end, is a specific pleasure that the island calendar does not offer many equivalents to.
Tickets from £80 adults; day tickets may be available. threeriversfest.uk for full details. More music and community events on the island over the bank holiday.