Tucked between the great god Glastonbury and the mock-hippy island sanctuary of Bestival on this year’s British festival circuit, WOMAD’s world music experience – featuring “no clue who anyone is on this lineup” – is easy to overlook. But mainstream pop festivals and their big name listings are overrated. Where’s the fun in having to endure a set of Rascal’s overly commercialised recent output, when all you really want to hear is some Boy In Da Corner gold dust from 2003? It often seems that we festival-goers are just there for the name and not the music.

But WOMAD doesn’t try to quench your thirst for chart toppers or Mercury Prize winners – and that’s precisely its forte. Stroll around the “World of Wellbeing”, pass by the woodland BBC Radio 3 Stage, investigate the small marquees in the main arena; soon you don’t care about who’s playing, but what they’re playing. All you have to do is listen… and appreciate.

The fact that a few weeks ago not a single guitar based band featured in the UK Top 10 – a first in chart history – just goes to show the extent of the digitised music invasion. Recording (and maybe even playing) “live” is now faux pas Ga Ga. In this musical climate of digitally manufactured melodies that are squeezed through beat-mapping software and neatly packaged into mere three-minute soundbites, it comes as a relief to hear something a little rawer and unconstrained.

Thankfully, WOMAD delivers on this promise with acts such as Orchestre National de Barbès, from Paris. Cheerfully mixing ska, chanson, and north African music with a treatment of La Marseillaise, the Orchestre asserts its vision of a multicultural France. Also “representing” are the female duo Nouvelle Vague, who provide alternative cabaret adaptations of punk-rock classics, including a amusing acoustic rendition of “God Save The Queen”.

There were, however, some grand failures on the “original” music front. The Bays’ collaboration with Heritage Orchestra, John Metcalfe and Simon Hale was an attempt to fuse a classical orchestra with a band while both improvised. The gig featured two composers writing music, which was then projected on an array of music-stand-computer-screen devices by the attending orchestra. It was like a situation from Wall Street, but with the bankers bearing violins. I can’t fault the orchestra’s performance – all members seemed to be on full steam. But the accompanying band, The Bays, drowned everything out with roaring drum and bass dance rhythms, devoid of any creativity. A nice idea, but this musical stock market quickly descended into a state of liquidation.

But with every failure there was a surprise gem round the corner. The highlight of this year’s festival was far and away the Congolese group Staff Benda Bilili, a band formed by musicians who have suffered from polio. With one on crutches, and four rocking up on wheelchairs, they delivered one of the most inspiring performances of the festival. They later teamed up with a group of street kids, one of whom had fashioned his own instrument out an old milk-powder can and a strand of electrical wire. This blend of Congolese rumba, funk and R&B paired energy with sensitivity.

The size of the names on the bill is also matched by the size of the site itself. The fact that the main stage is only the modest West Holts Stage from Glasto’ gives some perspective on this. Neither does WOMAD have much to offer those late-night basshunter bandits who feast on sub woofers and paralytic light shows. Most of the tents pack up shop by midnight with only the odd hypnotic drumming workshop pounding on into the early hours. An early night every night? Yes. But at least you’re lulled to sleep by the sounds of a Mongolian throat-singing finale.

Bestival is the festival that doesn’t take itself seriously. I realised this halfway through my toboggan ride. Skirting the hills on the outskirts of the site, the rickety toboggan (slogan: “Your safety is in your hands”) trundled uphill on a conveyor belt. It passed one sign that ordered me to “OBEY ALL SIGNS”, then another that simply read “!!!”, at which point it reached the top of the hill, pulled a sharp U-turn, and gave me a commanding view of the festival down below. I saw a spider-shaped stage spewing flames (see photo), a funfair, Tinky Winky, Princess Mononoke, Jigglypuff, and 55,000 other costumed revellers. I was on all kinds of highs when the toboggan abruptly plunged downwards.

The festival’s objective – to “bring magic to [the Isle of Wight] and spread the love worldwide” – is decidedly Woodstock, and it’s fulfilled by the neo-hippy crowds and relaxed psychedelia of the décor. Also crucial to the festival’s sense of easy-going camaraderie is its relatively small scale. The site (in contrast to the website) is easy to navigate – unlike Glastonbury, it doesn’t span an area the size of Sudan, and unlike Benicassim, it isn’t split in two by a village. How it fit the whole of North London is a mystery. Yet this was the year Bestival was upgraded to the major league – its lineup was for the first time world-class, and its tickets sold out faster than ever before. Rumours that it will relocate to a far larger site in 2011 worry me.

For Bestival is also the festival that doesn’t take its logistics seriously. Though smaller than Glastonbury and the others, it nevertheless has the task of shifting tens of thousands onto and off a tiny island. The organisers did not rise to the occasion. In a bizarre inversion of the Speed films, ferries and buses crawled along as if stoned; the return buses on the Monday morning drove past every twenty minutes, ironically pumping The Beatles’ “Get Back” as they picked up thirty passengers at a time from the mile-long queue. If Bestival is to expand in next year, this problem will have to be addressed.

The lineup didn’t quite suit the 1969 vibe, because Bestival aims to be as musically diverse as possible. Curator (and Radio 1 DJ) Rob da Bank compiled the best and most eclectic festival setlist of the summer, cramming in hip hop, two-step, indie, and a whole lot of that new strain of wistful folk-rock. He himself turned up on Saturday afternoon, looking stressedival, to treat the dance tent to an hour-long mix of Prince’s greatest hits.

Of the headliners, The Flaming Lips best summed up the festival’s ethos. Their set was gimmicky, colourful, and totally euphoric; most importantly, singer Wayne Coyne incited a sense of community in his audience, engaging them in call-and-answer singalongs and feel-good conversation about drugs. On the following night, The Prodigy – a bunch of evil people – went headlong against the Bestival spirit, but still sparked the crowd like a live wire. The two bands have rightfully been hailed as the highlights of the festival.

2010 caught Bestival in a period of transition. On the back of a stellar lineup, Rob da Bank’s festival was larger, more popular and varied this year than before, and it has begun to strain at the seams – I felt that the site was messier and more crowded than in 2009. All around lay cans and pizza boxes, in flagrant violation of the festival’s green credentials (it received the “Outstanding Greener Festival Award” in 2009). How the hippies deal with these problems remains to be seen next year.

Coalitions are rather in vogue at the moment, first from the government and now from the film studios. ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ is the second blockbuster out this year from the collaboration between Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer, the first being the Prince of Persia. The jury is still out on the success of the ‘Con-Dems’, but this reporter has truly made up his mind on the ‘Dis-Bruck’.

The story is very much on the basic side, with a plot that is by no means in the same league as ‘Inception’. In 740 AD, the sorcerer Balthazar (Nick Cage) is an apprentice of Merlin. He and two other apprentices help Merlin battle Morgana le Fay, but due to the betrayal of Horvath (Alfred Molina), one of his apprentices, Merlin is killed. Because of this, Morgana is only trapped, not defeated, and in doing so takes the body of the third apprentice with her. Balthazar then spends the next 1,000 or so years searching for Merlin’s heir who has the power to help him defeat Morgana. The heir turns out to be wet physics nerd Dave Stutler (Jay Baruchel) who has no choice but o be trained in order to defeat Morgana. The plot has little, if no, surprises, and readers of this brief synopsis can likely guess how the rest of the film pans out.

Unusually for Jerry Bruckheimer, who usually charges up his films with high calibre star power, there are only two big names in the cast: Nicholas Cage and Alfred Molina. The effect of these two stars could not have contrasted more. In the past decade, Nicholas Cage has increasingly failed to resurrect the acting talents that won him an Oscar for ‘Leaving Las Vegas’ in 1995, and this film hasn’t helped. His performance is wooden and lacks the depth and slightly oddball, troubled quality that the character desperately calls for. Alfred Molina, on the other hand, plays Horvath extremely well, making him both sinister and believable in a performance that effortlessly steals the light away from the other actors on screen. The other main cast members are new to important big screen roles, and such inexperience is painfully exposed in their performances. Baruchel’s portrayal of Dave as an ordinary boy in extraordinary circumstances comes across as merely wet, whiny and pathetic, while Teresa Palmer, who plays Becky (the love interest) is one of the most pointless heroines of recent times. Palmer’s character adds nothing to the plot and any acting ability she might have is lost in the dire script.

The strength of the film, however, lies in the magic, the effects of which beat those used in the’Harry Potter’ films. All of the spells and enchantments are creatively rendered, making the magical fight scenes a delight to watch. The movie also tries to add depth to the magic by fusing it with science, though this has limited success; it’s difficult to find a scientific explanation for turning a pack of wolves into puppies. However, the depth to the magic doesn’t extend very far and intricate details and histories that could have been added are simply skimmed over. Instead, these are replaced by the inevitable goofy scene of out of control brooms and water, a ‘crowd-pleasing’ moment that impresses none.

Although the magic and special effects are top notch, they can’t save this film from its tediously clunky dialogue and neglected script. The deficiencies in these areas mean the film lacks any shred of tension, clearly a major problem for a supposed action movie. The fights, the chase scenes and the near misses do nothing to thrill the audience or keep them on the edge of their seats because character development is neglected. This bland film utterly fails to live up to its potential, and no amount of CGI that the ‘Dis-Bruck’ coalition try to throw at it can save this mess.

It was not without a measure of trepidation that I made the pilgrimage to the Reading Festival this year. I hadn’t been particularly taken by the headline acts, nor had the extortionately-priced tickets convinced me that the trip would be worth my while; indeed, pitching camp in a boggy quagmire at 8pm on a Wednesday night in the pissing rain did nothing to lift my spirits. Yet, thanks to a (similarly drizzly) Thursday spent in the growing excitement of my friends, a lukewarm flame of anticipation began to flare in my mind, and come Friday had grown into a full-blown restlessness for the start of proceedings.

Half past noon on the opening day brought the unenviable first act, attended by an unusually large crowd on the Festival Republic stage. Our entertainers were the terrible Gaggle, an armour-clad choir of fifteen or twenty warlike women bearing an over-pretentious standard (reading ‘This Is Merely a Distraction from the Inevitable’) and yelling about the mental whirrings of the adolescent fairer sex. Surfer Blood, thankfully, did provide an early-afternoon alleviation from the untenable dross served up by Gaggle, blasting out several memorable tracks from their January debut ‘Astro Coast’, before Girls graced us with gorgeous material from 2009’s simplistically-titled LP, ‘Album’, including their Skeeter Davis cover, ‘The End of the World’. Later in the evening, a furious air-guitar battle ensued during an all-singles set put on by Queens of the Stone Age. Josh Homme, Dean Fertita et al did not disappoint, thrashing out crowd favourites such as ‘No One Knows’ and ‘Go with the Flow’. LCD Soundsystem were similarly upbeat, showcasing James Murphy’s knack for finding a driving dance beat and his Seinfeld-esque talent for witty monologue and lyricism.

The highlight of my Friday, however, was Yeasayer, playing a late-afternoon slot on the NME Stage. A fan of their delightfully experimental second album, ‘Odd Blood’, I was hoping that the danceable New York quintet would keep their audience guessing in a similar manner in their live performances. I wasn’t disappointed – their gig was jam-packed with dreamlike hooks and echoey guitar riffs, one track surreptitiously melting into the next. ‘Wait For The Summer’, from the ‘All Hour Cymbals’ LP, sounded fresh from the Middle East, while the live version of ‘Rome’, with its thumping bass riff, was infectiously funked-up. Of course, the reception for 2010 singles ‘Ambling Alp’ and ‘O.N.E.’ were rapturous, the latter’s reverberating riff accompanied by psychedelic visuals.

Everything Everything kicked off Saturday afternoon in disappointing fashion. My hopes that more of their material would resemble ‘MY KZ, UR BF’ were dashed by a lukewarm live performance, compounded by poorly-balanced sound that amplified the usually pleasantly flighty vocals into a piercing puppy’s yelp. In the afternoon, I was similarly unimpressed by Modest Mouse; my pre-festival scouring of their back catalogue had only yielded a couple of songs that I took to, and, perhaps ‘Tiny Cities Made of Ashes’ aside, their set gave me little more to catch hold of, delivered with minimal effort or flair. Succeeding them on the Main Stage, though, were the captivating Maccabees, Orlando Weeks’s personal charm endearing his band to a big audience almost as much as the beautiful ‘Toothpaste Kisses’ and the more upbeat ‘Can You Give It’. So enamoured was Mr. Weeks with his audience that he treated us all to one or two – as yet nameless – new songs in anticipation of the band’s third album.

Disappointed as I was at substituting the chance to see Villagers for the less poetic (but similarly Mercury-prize nominated) Dizzee Rascal, I was desperate for a decent position to see the ‘official’ reunion show by the Libertines at around half past eight that Saturday evening. The band kicked off – aptly enough, some might say, given the events of the past six years – with a frantic performance of ‘Horrorshow’, and proceeded to storm through such ‘Up the Bracket’ numbers as ‘Vertigo’ and ‘Boys in the Band’. A bleary-eyed, fairly pale but jovial Pete Doherty advised us all to ‘take care of each other out there’ (their set had been briefly stopped at Leeds the night before due to an over-zealous crowd response). Doherty, Barat and co. then followed up a melancholy performance of ‘Music When The Lights Go Out’ with crowd-pleaser ‘Can’t Stand Me Now’. Throughout the gig, the band looked revitalised, enthusiastic and happy to be playing together once again. Their set, like its Leeds counterpart the night before, was not without incident – a power outage within ten minutes of the end caused a two- or three-minute disruption – but the band returned to the stage to finish an unforgettable reunion set with ‘What a Waster’ and ‘I Get Along’, after which all four Libertines embraced each other warmly.

Saturday’s headliner was Arcade Fire, who, despite the positive critical acclaim of current album ‘The Suburbs’, seemed genuinely shocked to be headlining such a prestigious festival: ‘We’ve not even had a hit single,’ Win Butler grumbled incredulously to the masses. As if determined to hold their audience’s attention, the abundant members of the band scurried about the stage, capering wildly under a huge screen displaying artistic looped video clips and special effects. Win, dressed in heavy boots and a military jacket, kicked off with a frenetic performance of ‘Ready To Start’ and soon sang lead on ‘No Cars Go’, from 2007’s ‘Neon Bible’. His wife Régine Chassagne, in a silver sequined dress, gave a mesmerising elegy to her homeland with ‘Haïti’. Tracks played from the new album included ‘The Suburbs’, ‘We Used To Wait’ and ‘Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)’, before the Montreal-based outfit encored with ‘Month of May’ and 2005 single ‘Wake Up’.

A series of some of my favourite up-and-coming acts were due to grace the NME Stage from early Sunday afternoon, yet even with the weak sun finally shining over the arena, the final day was to prove largely anticlimactic. My imaginary award for best rock-‘n’-roll moment at the festival was surely won by The Joy Formidable’s Ritzy Bryan, who thought nothing of smashing her sleek yet chronically faulty electric guitar to pieces at ten to one p.m., after merely the first song. Thankfully, epic, arena-built tracks like ‘The Greatest Light Is The Greatest Shade’ and ‘Austere’ proved the replacement more than worthy of the task. A disappointing Los Campesinos! were succeeded by a spellbinding performance from Wild Beasts – live versions of ‘Hooting and Howling’ and ‘Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants’ showing off every permutation of Hayden Thorpe’s falsetto. The Drums may have disappointed some fans by not playing ‘Let’s Go Surfing’, but the strength of the rest of the album, combined with their typically camp prancing around, carried the band through. Foals proved to be the final band I watched fully: Yannis Philippakis kept the band’s euphoric fanbase interested via the unconventional means of stage-diving, climbing stage rigging, and daring everyone to sit down. I can’t deny I get an almost irrepressible urge to shout ‘shut up and get on with it’ to pretentious frontmen who demand such logistically challenging acts of their fans; however, I managed to keep my patience with my bearded fellow Oxonian, on the basis of his group’s entrancing recital of the clammy ‘Spanish Sahara’, the buoyant ‘This Orient’ and a nostalgic return to my Year 9 math-rock playlist with ‘Hummer’ and ‘Balloons’.

But despite a very pleasant afternoon, by nine o’clock my evening of live music was effectively over. Equally disinterested by the prospect of headliners Blink-182, Klaxons and British Sea Power, my girlfriend and I found ourselves wandering aimlessly around the arena, before deciding to abort mission back to camp in anticipation of the Sunday night silent disco. And for me, that was the problem with this year’s festival – the dearth of engaging main stage acts. Saturday aside, I approached the prospect of watching the more established bands with apathy. The mix of hugely commercial international acts – premeditated dickheads Guns ‘n’ Roses, kid-rockers Blink with their cringe-worthy live performance, or the overbearing Limp Bizkit and NOFX – with more ‘niche’ but in many cases more talented acts seemed to show a lack of a general direction from the Reading & Leeds organisers and an attempt to please all those who ally themselves under the vague label of ‘rock fan’. Don’t get me wrong, I had an enjoyable experience over the course of the weekend, but next year, a more concerted effort to book a greater variety of main stage acts would be welcome.