IT has become increasingly popular for festivals to be curated by big names.

All Tomorrow's Parties, the event that formerly occupied Pontins in Camber Sands, saw names such as Shellac, The National and Deerhunter put together the bill.

Wild Life was developed as a new festival last year by two names at the top of their game: London drum 'n' bass band Rudimental, and Disclosure, comprising brothers Howard and Guy Lawrence who hail from Redhill in Surrey.

Sussex's biggest music festival returns this year with 30,000 people expected through the gates.

Rudimental, pictured, have said, "Last year was incredible and we can't wait to do it all over again."

Consisting of Piers Agget, Amir Amor, Kesi Dryden and Leon Rolle, the band were nominated for a Mercury Prize in 2013 and won several awards including a Brit Award.

The group rose to prominence in 2012 with their single Feel The Love, featuring singer John Newman, and released further singles including Not Giving In, featuring Newman and Alex Clare, Waiting All Night featuring Ella Eyre and Free featuring Emeli Sandé.

In 2013 Rudimental's album Home debuted at number one in the UK albums chart and was also nominated for a Mercury Music Prize.

As for Disclosure, older brother Guy, 25, developed an interest in Detroit-based rapper and producer J Dilla when he was a teenager before introducing Howard to house music.

The pair are influenced by artists such as Joy Orbison, James Blake, Burial and Mount Kimbie, and took time to look back at these origins in Chicago house, Detroit techno and two-step garage.

They released their debut studio album, Settle, in June 2013. It was nominated for Best Dance/Electronica Album at the 2014 Grammy Awards.

They followed this up with a second studio album, Caracal, in September 2015, which received another Grammy nomination in the same category this year.

Elsewhere, this years line-up features hit artists such as Skepta, Stormzy, Bastille, James Bay, Ice Cube and many more.

Wild Life runs tomorrow, June 11, and Sunday, June 12. Live music and DJs play at the airport until 1am, though this year there are licensed after-parties that are expected to run into the early hours of Sunday and Monday morning.

Tickets are available online from the festival’s website for a weekend price of £116.75. Visit wildlifefestival.com.

BASTILLE

THREE years ago Dan Smith, founder and songwriter behind Bastille, spoke to The Guide ahead of a show at Concorde 2.

Their debut album the same year, Bad Blood, entered the UK charts at number one.

“I never really contemplated doing anything outside of just doing it for myself,” he admitted at the time, referring to his teenhood spent writing songs in his bedroom.

The Concorde 2 show was followed by a slot at the Brighton Dome for that year's Great Escape - the third time Bastille had come to Brighton for the festival.

Now the band arrive at Wild Life as one of the British acts of the moment.

Formed by Smith after recruiting keyboard player Kyle Simmons, bassist Will Farquarson and drummer Chris Wood, the video for their limited single Flaws scored half a million hits on YouTube.

Signed by Virgin Records and hotly tipped by a network of bloggers, after three singles they were selling-out the headline UK tour that saw them visit the Concorde - before their album was even released.

“It was totally unexpected because we'd never discussed any big ambitions,” says Smith. “With that tour, when we sold out two nights at Shepherd’s Bush Empire we thought, 'Whoa, this is ridiculous.’ "I don’t think we ever imagined it getting any bigger than that.”

But it did. The infectious fourth single Pompeii (with the chorus, "And if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing changed at all") became one of the most recognisable songs of the past few years, selling more than ten million singles worldwide and proving the number one rock song on US radio in 2014.

The album, Bad Blood, followed, staying in the top 20 for two years.

In picking his highlights from that time, Smith cites meeting his all-time hero, David Lynch, whose 1990 TV series Twin Peaks inspired Bastille’s song Laura Palmer.

“I was pretty nervous,” says Smith, “but he was a very warm and funny guy to hang out with. He just stuck out his hand and said, ‘Hi Dan, I’m Dave,’ and my head basically exploded on the spot. David Lynch is the biggest rock star in my world.”

Brit Award nominations followed and they walked away with a British Breakthrough Act gong. After playing a host of big festivals including Glastonbury, the band went back to the studio to work on their second album, Wild World, which is due out this summer.

Even so, Smith remains "in denial" about the band's success.

“As a band, our expectations have never been high,” he confesses. “That might sound weird after the couple of years we’ve had, but I think it helps.

"We tend not to revel in stuff or rest on our laurels. Like, when we were told our album had gone to number one we went ‘that’s nuts,’ then we got drunk and the next day we didn't really speak about it again. Any kind of success we’ve had, we’re mildly in denial about.”

JAMES BAY

MANY musicians flock to Brighton and Hove in search of their artistic fortune.

Few can claim to have charted as meteoric rise as James Bay.

Moving to Brighton from his home town of Hitchin, Herts, in 2008, Bay played a string of open mic nights plying his trade.

"That taught me a lot about writing and performing on my own and trying to hold my own," he said.

His guitar songs can be described as melancholic, veering between downbeat and strident, with a soul-searching tone reminiscent of Nick Drake but also the lofty resilience of Bruce Springsteen.

After signing a record deal in 2013 and picking up a Brit Award the following year his first album, Chaos And The Calm was released in March 2015. It entered the charts at number one, going platinum. The same year he was named on the BBC Sound Of 2015 longlist - where he came second.

While Bay is clearly looking firmly to the future, it's the value of his searching past that seems to draw in the fans.

The thread that weaves throughout Bay's debut album is an acknowledgement of what drove him out of his small hometown to chase his dreams.

The displacement from the place he grew up in, and the necessary upheaval of leaving the comfort of loved ones is explored across the album.

"It's about family and close friends," Bay says, "Because to those people I can say, 'I don't hate you,' or, 'I'm not breaking up with you ... I've just got to go.'

"And that was such a big deal for me."

The album also touches on the strain of maintaining a relationship despite chasing his dreams as a singer.

"The song Let It Go is not a break-up song for me," Bay says, "I didn't write it because I wanted to break up with somebody, and I didn't write it because I felt like it was over.

"Scars [another song] was a very real scenario where, yeah, that person had to go, and it was really difficult."

The musical spectrum of his debut was, Bay says, a deliberate attempt to prevent any stylistic barriers from the beginning. Given his successes, it would seem he has achieved that.

THE AVALANCHES

IT may have taken ten years but interest in Australian electronica collective The Avalanches continues to snowball ahead of their second album Wildflower.

The group garnered massive critical acclaim globally for their debut effort Since I Left You, which, in 2000, redrew the battlelines of where electro music meets acoustic instrumentation.

Title track Since I Left You as well as the plunderphonic orchestration of Frontier Psychiatrist were instantly likeable and lingered long in the mind of those who didn't even count dance or electro music among their genres of choice.

Due out on July 8, Wildflower has been in production since at least 2005. The term "difficult second album" might be an understatement.

The road to finality has seen more twists and turns than the sonic journeys of their songs, culminating in the departure of founding member Darren Seltmann in 2014.

The line-up has chopped and changed in any case - currently a three-piece, its two remaining original members are Tony Di Blasi and Robbie Chater now supplemented with the skills of returning member James Dela Cruz.

Last week the first single from their second album was premiered on Australian radio station Triple J. Called Frankie Sinatra, the track features vocals from hip hop artist Danny Brown and Londoner Daniel Dumile, also known as MF Doom. It lifts a sample from Bobby Sox Idol, a song recorded by calypso singer Wilmoth Houdini in the 1940s. The title of the album was revealed the same day.

The slow-burn approach of Wildflower can perhaps be traced back to the work ethic behind Since I Left You.

Former member Seltmann told British recording magazine Sound On Sound in 2002 that the record was put together note by note in a painstaking process.

Current member Chater said at the time that the band were music gear geeks. "We love being overwhelmed by technology," he said.

"When we made Since I Left You ... it felt like we had to go the long way around to achieve the sounds we wanted.

"These days we just sit and look at our studios for hours before we start work - it's quite inspiring."

After a long wait, Wildflower should prove inspirational, too.

ANDY C

FOR a festival that focuses on dance music, it seems only fitting to include one of the pioneering forces in drum 'n' bass music.

Andrew Clarke started spinning the wheels of steel in the late 1980s and, adopting the name Andy C, has gone on to write countless underground anthems, ending up on BBC Radio 1.

Strains of his heavily saturated bass sounds can be heard in the forays made by Pendulum that proved hugely popular.

This heavy bass is Andy's signature sound, made possible by a mixing style he refers to as "the double drop" – lining up two tunes so the heaviest baselines kick in at the same time on both tracks.

Promoters say is success is "driven by a phenomenal work ethic and the kind of tour schedule that makes rock bands look like part-timers".

His reputation as one of the most significant British artists in global dance music has been hard-earned but it’s hard to work out where he attained the status of legend, such has been his steady rise. Some argue it was when he performed to 85,000 people at Glastonbury in 2013.

His touring schedule has been relentless over the years, frequently coming to Brighton for appearances at Concorde 2.

Earlier this year he undertook a marathon six-hour set at Alexandra Palace in London with 10,000 ravers under the roof.

In addition he has built up a reputation as the go-to remixer for the likes of Major Lazer, Wild Life curator Rudimental, London Grammar and more.

He was recognised as a cover star by both Mixmag and DJ Mag, winning the latter’s Best British DJ Award 2013.

His achievements extent to setting up Ram Records, nurturing and developing headline artists such as Chase & Status, Wilkinson and Sub Focus.

Constantly digging around for new artists, it looks like the future of drum 'n' bass (with an emphasis on the bass) is in safe hands.

And finally...

DJ BARELY LEGAL

CHLOE ROBINSON, also known as DJ Barely Legal, represents the fresh blood behind the current revival of UK garage and grime.

Despite the suggestive moniker, Robinson turns 25 in August having played an impressive array of stages. Past performances in Brighton include club nights at The Arch and Concorde 2.

Raised on 1990s garage music from birth by her mother, the Birmingham girl's sound showcases a level of genre-bending that gets crowds pointing fingers in the air.

Robinson bought her first set of decks at the age of 19 and proceeded to "throw away the rulebook".

Aside from seemingly holding the accolade for the world’s most compact pint-sized DJ, Adidas-clad Robinson has garnered fans from across the dance spectrum for her stripped back sets that intersperse shuffles, pulses, bleeps and the sample noises one might expect from software such as Reason.

Her eclectic set lists are said to add dimension and colour to the fashionable house music backdrop of contemporary clubland.

Now living in London, she played a Warehouse Project set alongside bass deity Four Tet in 2013. Since then, she has become a mainstay at London superclub Fabric, supported Hannah Wants on her sold-out tour and made a Boiler Room debut.

Amid other festival sets, Robinson takes to Wild Life as interest in her spacious garage sound continues to grow.

She is constantly churning out mixes for the likes of BBC Radio 1, Rinse FM, i-D and Thump that span old school garage, grime, drum 'n' bass, hip-hop and everything in between. A recent hour-long set for Mixmag notched up 100,000 plays in quick succession.

Retrospectively it seems inevitable that Barely Legal would attract the attention of Grime godfather, Wiley, who invited her to play at his Eskimo Dance and MC’d over one of her Daily Dose mixes alongside the formidable Scratchy, Riko Dan and God’s Gift.

Supporters suggest Robinson is becoming increasingly hard to ignore. With rumours of her own forthcoming production, her peer reviewed talents are fast developing and could see her become a fierce competitor as a producer.