Order was restored on Friday for the lead-in to the weekend climax of Brighton’s festival season, Jubilee Square and New Road bathed in a sunny glow of alfresco gigs, street food and beery cheer.

One of the best ways to tackle about the Great Escape’s intimidating music programme is with an open mind and it in that spirit we caught a glimpse of The Parrots, a band of Spanish gypsy rockers creating a merry ruckus in Photomatic in the North Laine. A sign on the door said no drinks, though there was little hope of an adherence to the rules as the anarchic outfit thrashed out a set cheek by jowl with revellers in the tiny shop.

The punk sensibilities were a long way from the trans-continental explorations of Sarathy Korwar, a band leader whose form-bending jazz is inspired by the folk drone of the Siddi people of India, Sufi Muslims descended from African merchants and slaves. With Korwar on drums, as well as a second layer of wooden box percussion, the quartet lay down some bedevilling bass-led time signatures, building up into chaotic reverence a la astral Alice Coltrane.

“Thanks for hanging in there with us”, Korwar remarks after a particularly insidious breakdown. “Things can get a little crazy up here.” Though largely understood as an indie festival, the Great Escape has always been inclusive to the likes of grime and UK rap, with leading urban music site GRM Daily’s schedule at Shooshh one of several takeovers on Friday night.

DJ P Montano kept up a steady flow of underground anthems on a besieged sound system, before making way for Kojo Funds’ crowd-pleasing appearance showing just how far afrobeats, grime, rap and RnB have come together in the last year. Capitalising on the exposure Drake’s world carnival sound has given Afrocentric street styles, ‘Fine Wine’ already feels like a classic.

Over at Patterns, Oxford quartet Low Island build up a solid rhythmic base which is tastefully psychedelic if a little forgettable; while Robocobra quartet play an unlikely fusion of hardcore punk and jazz at the Queens Hotel. There is some stretched out throwaway electro pop from Shy Luv at Coalition, while the Skins-thrash of Rat Boy is popular enough to fill the Wagner Hall, the energetic onstage antics broadcast outside by sponsor Vevo.

Choices are fairly limited after midnight, Cardiff collective Astroid Boys playing a raucous blend of grime, rap and rock, a combination no-one really asked for, while Perturbator doing exactly as his name suggests with a deafening wall of synth work, inspired by cyberpunk science fiction music.

Regardless of its sometimes hit and miss quality, the sheer variety on offer at the festival is exhilarating, yet again making the case – if it even needed making – for Brighton and Hove’s status as a great cultural city.

Finn Scott-Delaney