AND so to bed, off through the mud to the campsites, the buses and cars home or, for the lucky few, the local hotels.

Sunday's rain made it tough going for a while, and no-one could deny that the entire site wasn't transformed into sticky swathes of stinky mud that made such a beautiful location resemble a first world war battlefield.

But, at the end of the day - and it literally is now the end of the day - it's the music that matters, and some truly memorable, utterly gorgeous, thumpingly energetic, stunningly ecstatic sets have graced our ears.

Santogold, Beardyman, Elbow and Sparks will go down in Scottish festival legend. You will have other more personal memories and highlight choices, and that's why you're likely to come back, rain or shine. As headliners Franz Ferdinand might say, Eleanor Get Your Welly Boots Back On. See you here next year.

THE MUSIC

SUNDAY'S BANDS

FRANZ FERDINAND

Last year it was Primal Scream. This year it's Franz Ferdinand who are the appropriately Scottish headliner in this magnificently Scottish setting.

It has been a while since Alex Kapranos and his band mates played such a big gig north of the Border - but even longer since they released an album. Tonight they're testing out new material from their third long-player, due in January. Happy to report, they've not dived into salsa or Scandinavian folk music for inspiration.

Generally speaking, the new songs rely much more on Nick McCarthy playing keyboards and several have a heavy, fuzzy synth bassline as the foundation stone.

Elsewhere in the set, Matinee, This Fire, Jacqueline, Come On Home, Michael, The Fallen, Do You Want To and Walk Away are all present and correct. It's enough to get the crowd jumping - surely an impossibility given that their feet are sucked down in several inches of mud. One guy in a fluorescent coat is picked out by Kapranos as "dancing like a nutter", and he gets Take Me Out dedicated to him as a reward.

Hell, by the end of the set the clouds have even cleared and the stars are twinkling in the heavens. That's impressive.

SIGUR ROS

There are certain songs from your childhood that, when you hear them again as a disgruntled adult, send shivers down your spine. Sigur Ros's Hoppipolla is one of those tunes that immediately taps into that emotional vein, regardless of your upbringing.

It doesn't matter if you're watching footage of a polar bear drowning; or you're saying goodbye to a special friend; or buying a plate of chips, there's something about those soaring strings that reduces adults to tears.

Lead singer Jón Þór Birgisson, might look like he's slaughtering a troublesome hog while sacrificing a cello bow to the cause, but not since Daniel Day Lewis won a 2002 Oscar has butchery been so well received.

For those not lucky enough to yet stumble across it, the Icelanders offer Hydro Connect something that they've perhaps not found yet: unqualified bliss. Lights, noise, beauty and good old fashioned sentimentalism: it's all there. Thank Ros.

DUFFY

How long should it take you to walk from the back of a headliner's crowd to the front row?

The answer, according to most, is: forever. It should take forever because it shouldn't be possible. Unfortunately for Welsh popster Duffy, the answer is: the time it takes to walk from A to B. Undoubtedly she has a few good songs on that best-selling album; and undoubtedly they please some folk. But not too many of them are here tonight.

The stage is washed in blue light when she enters from the right and grabs the showbiz oomph of Distant Dreamer with both hands.

Her voice pierces the night air: there's remarkable power in that set of lungs, but surely someone should have told her to play something a bit less melodramatic for an opener.

She then says she's going to "lighten up the mood" with hit single Serious. Safe to say, her inter-song chat isn't where her talent lies.

As she works her way through the Rockferry album, it becomes clear that the tracks actually sound better, more convincing, more real when stripped of their over-polished studio sheen. But the set as a whole seems out of balance, right from those first big big big opening notes, and nothing else manages to match their attention-grabbing impact.

ATTIC LIGHTS

Is it because the (mostly) unsigned acts on the Your Sound Band Stand are a bit younger than people playing elsewhere that they've got to go to bed early?

This stage is the first to close down for the night - and the 2008 festival - but a decent crowd have gathered to catch a half-hour set from Attic Lights.

The Glasgow five-piece are among those who do have a record contract in their back pocket, and they're using this slot to showcase their debut album, due out in October. Still, it's the singles - Never Get Sick Of The Sea, God and in-the-shops-imminently Wendy - that warm the night air with a cushion of Beach Boys/Teenage Fanclub vocal harmonies.

THE GUTTER TWINS

A small but dedicated band gather at Guitars and Other Machines to worship at the feet of Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli and they're rewarded with a short but mesmeric performance.

Beginning at an almost overwhelming level of intensity, it initially seems the performance has nowhere else to go. Three songs in, the whole thing cranks up several gears and by the time they blast into Hit The City from Lanegan's classic Bubblegum album, the stage is on fire.

As usual Lanegan refuses to speak and barely moves, but that voice is on spellbinding form. Fighting its way through a maze of guitars and distortion, it is an instrument which is reaching the peak of its power.

Dulli is only slightly less impressive, delivering strong readings of his own tunes and stirring the band on to even greater heights. A dark and towering achievement which sets the bar high for the few acts still to follow.

WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS

Some would say it's easy to be a guitar-based boy band these days: play some catchy riffs, replace actual words with onomatopoeia and you're onto a winner.

It wouldn't be unreasonable if punters fleetingly passing the Your Sound Band Stand while We Were Promised Jetpacks rock out assumed that the Glasgow quartet offer nothing other than more of the same.

But not so. Sure there's bopping to be had through many of their songs, but these boys deliver more than the average flash-in-the-pan anthem-bashers.

Alas, alack, many of the crowd don't have the patience for the more progressive tracks which they reserve for the end of the set. A great name and solid tunes: they might not have the jetpacks yet, but these lads are going places.

GOLDFRAPP

There's a school of thought that says the best place to stand at any festival set is 10 yards in front of the sound desk. Stand there, and you get the full benefit of the stereo (after all, the workers behind you need to coordinate the light show with the best sound), plus there's no real angle of attack for the infamous flying pint.

Another school of thought says that, regardless of your genre, effort or fan-base, if you play a set while the sun sets, you're onto a winner.

When adding both of these factors together, you could argue that it would be hard for Goldfrapp to lose. Really, though, they could have played a small tent at high noon and they'd still have impressed.

Commanding officer Alison, swathed in pink smock, may be a little camera shy, but it doesn't stop her from laying on 50 minutes of consistent entertainment and the rain even stops to take in some of the show - which for a small clan of men painted as defiantly blue Smurfs, must have been a sincere relief.

KARL BARTOS

It's officially billed as "Karl Bartos (Dance Cinema)" and that's a fair approximation of what we're getting in the Unknown Pleasures tent.

A member of Kraftwerk for nigh-on 16 years, the 56-year old German mixes minimalist electronic beats, synth melodies, thumping basslines and messed-up vocals with a constant visual accompaniment of looped film clips and animated images. It means there's plenty to watch when the music gets a bit monotonous.

And it does. Bartos flicks from one Mac Powerbook to another, constructing the musical backing while his unnamed sidekick "sings" through a distorted microphone. We get the point: man and machine as one, from one of the pioneers of technologically proficient electronic music. But the repetitiveness wears down the relatively small crowd.

Camera Obscura is an early high point, more because of the jerky looped clips from Michael Powell's notorious film Peeping Tom that play on three screens behind Bartos's head than the song itself.

There are several dance music legends playing the Unknown Pleasures tent this weekend (Dave Clarke, James Holden and Andrew Weatherall among them), but few can beat Bartos's achievements as an innovative musician. It's just a shame that, vocally, his input to the dancefloor isn't translating to this particular live environment.

FRIGHTENED RABBIT

Enough talk about the weather. If it's too wet outside, move the party indoors.

The Speakeasy Cafe - sponsored by the Sunday Herald - has been busy enough all weekend, but it's positively full to bursting for an acoustic set by Frightened Rabbit.

People are spilling out of the doors, craning necks round corners to catch the music. Soon it has become a communal singalong - and anyone who knows the lyrics of the band's songs will realise how strange this can be. "You won't find love in a hole," sings the entire tent, "it takes more than f***ing someone to keep yourself warm".

ELBOW

All year, the music press has been saying that Elbow's moment has come. On the strength of this performance, wider acclaim for one of Britain's best unsung bands has been a long time arriving.

They enter and position themselves along the front of the stage: four men holding trumpets and one man behind a snare drum. After a couple of parps, they take their regular positions and pick up more familiar instruments. And then a truly transcendent set begins.

There is such warmth in the crowd for singer Guy Garvey. In turn, he acknowledges individuals with a pointed finger, a wave, a thumbs up. And after each song, he takes a bow. Meanwhile, his astonishingly pure voice floats out across the field.

Leaders Of The Free World and Grounds For Divorce are about as heavy as Elbow's sound gets. But it's the slower, more controlled songs that really set them apart, and this crowd has the patience and politeness to let the songs build and not spoil the quieter moments.

The Loneliness Of A Tower Crane Driver is otherworldly; Newborn is rapturous; One Day Like This ... well, the thesaurus doesn't have a word to do it justice. "Wonderful, wonderful music," says a man behind me. "His voice is gorgeous," replies his partner. And they're right.

CAMERA OBSCURA

The rain stopped, Camera Obscura swooned, people smiled. Some even danced.

This might be the festival's worst dressed band but they are armed with some gorgeous tunes and a smooth sound.

It would take a ten ton truck to drag them from the middle of the road but, with songs like Lloyd I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken, who cares?

SANTOGOLD

Santogold is playing quite possibly the best set at this year's Hydro Connect.

Philadelphia's Santi White has arrived in a metallic dance suit - but before that her two identikit backing singers, trained to within an inch of their lives have positioned themselves, closely followed by the live drums, several other musicians, a mixing desk.

Songs are played in sequence from her debut album - a mash up of sounds that leaves you disorientated for the first seven listens. It's one of the best guitar bands of the weekend, and it's not even a guitar band.

Because she's a producer, the sound is virtually perfect, as is her stage craft, as is her dancing and that of her choreographed sidekicks.

She announces that there's only going to be one more song - there have been only a handful, but the band arrived late for their slot. The bass that follows on The Creator would punch a hole in a stained glass window.

Both on record and now live, Santogold is world class.

YOUNG KNIVES

The organisers of the Hydro Connect Festival like to stress that it takes place in a magical location, mythical even - like Atlantis perhaps.

Only, as of Sunday morning, Atlantis is probably drier. The grounds of Inveraray Castle are drenched by a downpour that shifts into drizzle and back again, and mud is everywhere.

At the Guitars and Other Machines stage only 40 people brave the weather at the start of the set by Black Cherry: one little boy is gleefully splashing in the puddles while the band try their best to get things going with their brand of funky blues given an indie makeover.

The Young Knives fare better on the Oyster Stage. With their sensible trousers, shirts and ties, this threesome push the geekometer so far that it comes full circle to where they're possibly the coolest people at the festival.

Their set leans heavily on second album Superabundance - they start with Terra Firma and also fit Turn Tail, Counters, Dyed In The Wool and Current Of The River into their allocated slot - but it's earlier songs such as Weekends And Bleak Days (Hot Summer), She's Attracted To and The Decision that receive the strongest response.

For a while at least, the weather ceases to matter. Everyone is reminded that they're here for the music, and the comic sibling banter between guitarist Henry Dartnell and his bass-playing brother Thomas aka The House Of Lords cracks a smile on the wettest of audience faces.

Inveraray Castle at the top of the hill, The House Of Lords at the bottom, the plebs sandwiched in between - Hydro Connect as a microcosm of British society.

ANNA MELDRUM

Ignorant people are annoying don't you think? Folks that would fire up a pipe band just as unsigned talent Anna Meldrum is about to play her first festival, for instance.

And wacky people, they are annoying too - right? You know; the sort of folk who mess around picking worms up off the floor to show their pals. Sure if they were two years old, or a blackbird, it'd be understandable, but for a twenty-something guy, it's a bit undignified.

Despite these and other (rainy) distractions, up-and-coming singer-songwriter Anna Meldrum isn't deterred. Armed with an acoustic guitar and a flock of origami birds (carrying her Myspace address and dispensed by her mum), the 19-year-old plays a tight, cuddly set to a crowd that - rain and competition considered - is bigger than would perhaps be expected.

She sings of eating disorders, infidelity and her own dodgy driving with a refreshingly Scottish voice and no small amount of vigour. On an otherwise miserable afternoon, there's at least a little sunshine to be had ... even if you have to wear a poncho to enjoy it.

***

SATURDAY'S BANDS

GLASVEGAS

Something big is happening over at the Guitars and Other Machines stage: more people are now assembled here than watched all of yesterday's bands combined. It can only mean one thing - the big talking point, the weekend's must-see band are about to play. And they're not international stars. They're Glasvegas, and they only live a bit further down the west coast.

Rewind a couple of hours, and the Sunday Herald is talking to the band's drummer, Caroline McKay, who is trying to remember about her visit to the festival as a punter last year.

"I had the best laugh," she says. "It felt just a wee bit more grown-up and bit more intimate than T in the Park. To be honest, I was incredibly drunk. I was just here with my friends. I'll be stone-cold sober this year - never drink before a performance, always afterwards. You can guarantee that when I come off stage, within half an hour I'll have a glass of wine in my hand."

And, by the end of the set, she deserves an entire bottle of vintage chardonnay. Hydro Connect is a milestone in the band's career, coming just a week before the release of their debut album. It's not just the size of the crowd they've attracted, but the emotions wrung out of every word sung by frontman James Allan.

The band seem to be stepping up a rung on the ladder: they're louder and even more intense than usual. And the festival's superb sound does them justice. For once, you can hear every layer, every nuance of guitar distortion, every Glaswegian consonant and vowel that comes out of Allan's mouth.

As ever, they don't hang about. It's a 35-minute set containing only eight songs: in order, Flowers & Football Tops, Lonesome Swan, It's My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry, SAD Light, Polmont On My Mind, Geraldine, Go Square Go and Daddy's Gone.

The crowd reaction? There's a huge section at the front, working its way back to the sound desk, that goes wild. On the edges and at the very back, there's curiosity, some new converts and a fair few shrugged shoulders from the unconvinced. A hint, perhaps, that Glasvegas will always have a fervent fanbase but might struggle to win the hearts of the mainstream.

But that's a quibble because this was undoubtedly one of Hydro Connect's finest moments. Not that Caroline McKay will be fazed by it.

"Nothing has changed for us, although there's madness everywhere we go," she says. "The four of us are a really tight-knit group of friends. We wind each other up like brother and sister. To be honest, with me it's no different if I'm playing to two people, 2000 or 20,000 - I'm still sick, still scared, worried that I'm going to mess up the drums and let the boys down, not do justice to James's music. The only thing that matters is that we put on the best show possible and enjoy it."

BLOC PARTY

What is it with bands coming up to Scotland and deciding the one thing they've absolutely got to do is get kitted out in a kilt. Do Glasvegas play Brixton Academy dressed as Pearly Kings and Queen? Do Idlewild turn up at Hammersmith Apollo decked out in bowler hat and pin-striped suit? No. But Kele Okereke of Bloc Party thinks it's a must for Hydro Connect.

Kele, you're cool enough in yourself, and this red kilt outfit only makes you look like a tourist who has stumbled into a tacky tourist shop on Princes Street.

Sartorial elegance aside, Bloc Party do pretty well as headliners. The Oyster Stage is crammed and enthusiastic. For the most part, they play it safe, slapping new songs from third album Intimacy (out on download last week but not available in physical form until October) up against the big crowd favourites. Mercury opens the gig - a statement of where they're going musically - but Banquet is next up in case the fans get nervous. Repeat the pattern as the set goes on.

This is the final gig for stand-in bass player Daniel Lindegren (Gordon Moakes has been on paternity leave) and he's making the most of it, proving he can really play. So too can the whole band. At times you think they so so so want to be Radiohead - not just by having a download album - but they rock harder than Thom Yorke and co. As a Hydro Connect headliner, they're part art-punk, part mainstream indie, so perhaps the perfect fit for a festival such as this. Beats Kasabian for sure.

Halfway through the four-song encore, they switch on a green laser above the drums. It seems to catch rain drops in the light, turning a Scottish cliche into something quite beautiful. But then there are those other cliches, the kilts. " I've always wanted to wear one," says Okereke. "They're great on stage and let the air in, if you know what I mean." We do, but we didn't need to know.

GRINDERMAN

Grinderman is the spiky-edged platform for Nick Cave's darker persona, with a licence for far dirtier blues than his normal incarnation would allow. Along with three Bad Seeds (Martyn P. Casey, Warren Ellis and Jim Sclavunos) all hell very gratefully breaks loose. It's clear within about 17 nanoseconds that this is a world-class band, playing world-class music.

Cave cuts a dash in a white shirt and razor tight trousers screaming "Won't somebody touch me?" and there are plenty of offers from the crowd. Like Lucifer, or a travelling preacher man, he whips up a frenzy in no time and at one point has everyone clapping a fairly complex syncopated beat while he spews out more Gothic imagery than Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

From another mouth, the growled refrain of No Pussy Blues would make you want to crawl under a rock and cry - with Cave it comes across as genuine, as if he might have locked himself in a sex-free bunker for a number of weeks to accumulate the necessary rage. Not even Sclavunos's bubblegum pink drum kit can detract from the fact that this band is leaking testosterone.

There's never a doubt that we are in four safe pairs of hands that know exactly where they want to take us: into the blood-pumping heart of garage rock. Cave's chat is good if a little odd. "What's that blue thing on your head?" he asks an audience member at one point. "Is it a lunch box?".

Ellis on guitar is sadly let down through lack of volume on Honey Bee (Let's Fly To Mars) but blisters through the rest of the set with Wild Man of Borneo looks and matching hooks. The lights are class, the sound even more so, and everyone is rocking. Maybe the first genuine shivers of the festival.

PAOLO NUTINI

Paolo Nutini laughs in the face of convention. Well, more like cackles. In the great book of rock rules, road-testing your new material is always a shortcut to crowd restlessness. So the decision of Paisley's favourite son to build his Hydro Connect set around his upcoming second album is a brave one.

Lucky then, that the evening crowd are feeling generous. Whereas his debut, These Streets, cast him as a ragged, amorous troubadour, his new material suggests he's gone all Johnny Cash on us. Rhythms borrowed from Amtrack rattle through several of the songs, which lyrically celebrate what the 20-something has been spending the two years since his last release doing: smoking, drinking, and womanising. The man in black would be proud.

Nutini's new, Nashville-lovin' persona is cemented when he introduces a new song about his dad, called Simple Things, all about how his father is rich not because of material wealth but because of family. Nothing keeps it country more than saluting your pa.

Thankfully he doesn't over-stretch the crowd's willingness to indulge his new toys. The hits from These Streets are wheeled out with rapturous approval. Last Request is stripped down and lovely, New Shoes bounds along with pep, and the set closes with his one truly great song, Jenny Don't Be Hasty, which features the best guitar riff Keith Richards never wrote. But the highlight turns out to be a call and response rockabilly cover of the theme tune from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. At this it is not just Nutini who is laughing in the face of convention.

GOSSIP

There was only one question and that was when Beth Ditto would get her kit off. It's done with such regularity that to not be subjected, you might feel robbed or undervalued. Anticipation started even before the band came on, with Ditto doing her soundcheck, smoking a cigarette and causing a minor frenzy.

And what a pair of lungs - when she starts she doesn't stop. "I'm ready to get drenched in piss and food," she says. "Scotland's the only place in the world where they throw food at you and it means 'I love you'." The urine taunts kept coming, Ditto daring the crowd at regular intervals to piss in a bottle and throw it at her, and nobody obliging. Anything that was thrown - water bottles, glow sticks - was thrown right back.

Gossip only have two gears: the slow one and then the heavy screaming chorus. No encore was needed. Final song Standing In The Way Of Control was the only way this gig was meant to finish - another big bounce and pure abandon - with Ditto singing Queen's We Are The Champions at intervals during the song.

l energy. Pure energy. But no bottles of urine and - maybe as a consequence - no Ditto in the buff at Hydro Connect. Oh well.

GOMEZ

The field at the Guitars And Other Machines stage is rammed. Gomez are playing their 1998 Mercury Music Prize winning album Bring It On from start to finish and already it feels like a greatest hits set. Opener Get Miles goes down a storm. The scorched-earth vocals of Ian Ball are progressively switched with those of Ben Ottewell and Tom Gray - at times all three come together in glorious harmony.

By track 8, Get Myself Arrested, most people are bouncing, their arms in the air. One man with a heavy leg cast waves his crutches above his head as if he has been miraculously cured. The superstition that the Mercury Prize is a kiss of death for the UK's most promising bands may have begun in earnest with Gomez - the fact that they're playing their debut album, the band's high water mark, and nearly everyone watching knows it inside out, says a lot about what has followed since.

Gomez could probably tour this album back and forth across Britain for the next few years and make a killing but that possibility seems very unlikely. "We're probably not going to do this ever again," says an on-form Tom Gray, who has conducted most of the hand clapping. "I hope you've f**king enjoyed it." As if there was any doubt.

SALON SOCIETY @ SPEAKEASY CAFE

For Salon Society, winning the Sunday Herald competition to play at Hydro Connect was relatively easy. Getting the band together and travelling back from Germany at a week's notice? No problem. It was all going smoothly for the Glasgow band until they tried to make the final 500m journey from the festival gates to play at the Speakeasy Café.

"That was a nightmare," says lead singer Roxanne Claxton. "The guard at the gate said our passes weren't valid and wouldn't let us in." Cue their best pleading voices and anxious phone calls. But the trio of Claxton, Dortothee Weber, and Luci Jones made their date with an expectant crowd with moments to spare.

And now they've caught their breath, they're quite taken with their rather louche surroundings. The Speakeasy Café, sponsored by the Sunday Herald, is, according to one of its organisers, pioneering the look of "junk shop chic".

Kitch lamps sit atop mismatched tables, while vivid paintings by a local artist hang alongside multi-coloured throws on the walls. "This place feels great," says Claxton, "and fits in with what we're doing. We're called Salon Society after the 19th century Parisian culture where artisans would be taken in to perform. So the vibe here really suits us."

Among the artful clutter, gaggles of people sit curled up on sofas, Glasvegas are reading the papers, with the smell of coffee and homemade banoffee pie wafting from the small stall in the corner. It's certainly the most welcoming junk shop in Argyll, and one full of the eager sounds of some of the best new bands in Scotland. Like the best curio shop it is full of gems waiting to be uncovered.

Later in the day, after the strains of Salon Society's acoustic set have faded, author Allan Bisset will read extracts from his work. The bohemian mix of art forms thicken as the night wears on. Comedians Phil Kay and Phil Nichol are likely to pack out the tent as many seek refuge from a hard days festival going. And on Sunday it will start all over again with the likes of hotly tipped Frightened Rabbit competing with freshly baked brownies for people's attention. Best get there early.

LATE OF THE PIER

Late Of The Pier have simultaneously drawn the festival's short straw and won the lottery. They're opening the Oyster Stage (yay!) but they've been shifted up into Joan As Police Woman's time slot (cue confused faces from those in the crowd who expected piano-led angst rather than perky indie pop that spills over into prog rock thrash).

Joan Wasser and her band have missed their flight (and they weren't even booked on Zoom), so it's up to this quartet from Castle Donnington to save the day. And they've got their work cut out, because their noisy mix of keyboards and guitars skews a bit young for Wasser's fans. Mind you, their album Fantasy Black Channel is one of the best of recent months, so they've got something substantial in their arsenal.

It takes until penultimate song Focker, with its fuzz-drone synths, to break through to the crowd - or maybe they've just taken the song's repeated refrain "I want to be your friend" to heart. And once the band are into set closer Bathroom Gurgle - a shade of Gary Numan there, a riff that sounds like Human League there - they've pulled victory from the jaws of defeat.

BROKEN RECORDS

Alas for Broken Records: as headliners of the Your Sound Band Stand on Saturday, the festival gods have made them compete for public affection against the mighty Bloc Party and The Gossip ...

Except they've also been given the opening slot for the Guitars And Other Machines stage. Hooray! "Come see us later as well 'cause Bloc Party and The Gossip are rubbish" jokes the lead singer Jamie Sutherland.

Sure, the big stage might be sparsely populated so early in the afternoon, but the Edinburgh seven-piece don't really seem to mind. Sutherland has some entertaining - albeit slightly risque - chat and sings "to try and bring the sun out."

During the slower tracks a mum snoozes with one eye on her restless weans and a young couple smooch on the grass. Not content with their listless audience, Broken Records launch into a trio of more upbeat tracks, including the infectious If Eilert Lovborg Wrote A Song.

Suddenly the mum is up on her feet swinging her youngest to the manic rhythm of the strings and while the baby laughs with glee, her toddler jumps up and down for the sheer joy of music. The couple even take a break from winching to have a jig.

So hooray for Broken Records! Hooray for what they do.

The Oyster Stage

"Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen," begins Conor Oberst. "We'd like to thank the Duke for letting us play on his lawn."

The wunderkind of Americana is growing up and learning some manners, it seems. Still only 28, but with umpteen albums, incarnations (Bright Eyes being his most successful one), and comparisons to greats like Neil Young and Bob Dylan already behind him, it feels like he has been a roving, moody troubadour since time immemorial.

A constant thorn in the side of Bush's America, he has been one of the few singer-songwriters to used their craft in a similar fashion to his 1960s contemporaries. Four years ago he was Rocking The Vote (a bit too softly, evidently) in the US to get people to vote out Dubya, and previous albums have been laced with anti-Republican vitriol. So a kindly nod to the British establishment is a charming surprise.

As is the bulk of his newest set. Instead of the beautiful, country-folk of Bright Eyes, Oberst is in Inveraray with his new group, the Mystic Valley Band.

If their sound if anything to go by, the valley is to be found in California and is about as mystic as The Band's first album and the Eagles' Greatest Hits. It is, as Oberst himself says, "sun tan music".

Ironic, then, that the drizzle decides to fall for the first time half way through the set. But the breezy tunes crack through the rain, led by a huge slab or Hammond organ and boogie-woogie guitar.

Oberst doesn't forget his roots, however, or where he is. Introducing the closing song, Milk Thistle, he says: "I'm going to play a ballad. Do you have ballads over here?" Looking over the grey, bleakly beautiful loch from the stage, he corrects himself. "I believe this is where ballads are from actually."

YouTube fanatics might be able to tell you a bit about Beardyman, but the chances are you won't have heard much about him yet. Performing in an increasingly dancey Unknown Pleasures tent, he plays some techno, electro, house, drum and bass, R&B and hip hop all in the first 10 minutes of his astonishing set. The thing is though he does it all - every beep, bop, boom and tssh - all of it with one tool: his gub.

One of the world's best beatboxers, the Brighton boy is one of the most innovative, daring and out-right talented acts on the bill this weekend. His range - only using his mouth, mind - is astonishing: he covers Ray Charles, Groove Armada, James Brown and even a drum and bass remix of the Superman theme - and that's just the first half of his set.

For the second half of the show he starts using a mixer and things get really special. Now simply looping his own sound effects and soundbites, he graduates to one of the best DJs of the weekend. While it can take some artists months to get a track just right, it takes Beardyman all of about 60 seconds. His penultimate tune, created from scratch, is Massive Attack's Teardrop and the man with the mouth reproduces every beautiful, tender nuance of the original.

A few hundred years ago, we'd have burned Beardyman at the stake, so unnatural is his ability. Thank goodness we've changed our ways.

MICHAEL FRANTI & SPEARHEAD

Michael Franti has a keen eye for injustice in the world, but he's blind to the Scottish weather. "Can you feel the sunshine, y'all?" he cries from the Oyster Stage over a sea of drizzled-on faces and ponchos. With his band Spearhead, he pogos his way through a global tour of world music, mixing reggae, ska, rap and African jit jive, turning the shores of Loch Fyne into a beach in the Caribbean.

Barefoot as usual (it's his way of marking global poverty), Franti even indulges in a bit of on-stage keepie-up that would get him signed for the Scottish national squad if he had a Scottish granny. Instead it's drummer Manas Itene who's got the strongest claim to local roots: Franti points out the man on the sticks is from Nigeria and so is "the last King of Scotland". Strictly speaking, that should be Uganda, but Franti - possibly the most charismatic frontman we'll see this weekend - is allowed a slip-up for bringing a ray of sunshine to a rather wet Saturday afternoon.

Things are starting to merge together, and not all in a good way. Late Of The Pier, like several of the other new bands appearing, mix the 1980s and the naughties with no apparent sense of irony, in their dress as much as their music. There's a proliferation of keyboard sounds that have already gone out of fashion, for a reason, and are coming back like hospital superbugs.

The Candi Staton synth and bass riff from last night's Kasabian gig has re-emerged at the start of the Friendly Fires set, and will resurface yet again a bit further into it. What the band does it does incredibly well: heavy, dance-quality bass and good drummers (occasionally there are two).

Frontman Ed Macfarlane, from St Albans like the rest of the band, has boundless energy. Mostly, he is like Jarvis Cocker doing an impression of Mick Jagger channeling Ian Dury at a tribute night to Frank Spencer. Confusingly, his enthusiasm doesn't spill over to the crowd, who are there in decent - but not overwhelming - numbers.

It could be because they're playing in broad daylight and that at night things would have been very different. Many people still have the wind knocked out of their sales thanks to Joan As Policewoman's last minute cancellation earlier today. That would have been the perfect breakfast - no one is completely ready to binge on the big stuff yet.

But at moments the set, culled from their self-titled debut album, is great. On Board is a clear highlight with drummer and guitarist downing tools to play cowbells and shakers, belting out well-worked harmonies. That said, single Paris is probably the crowd favourite and gets limbs going, slightly, at the front.

Closing track Ex Lover is as good if not better, and if everyone knew the words it would have been a fitting finale.

Kids, when they're scared of something, usually try to avoid eye contact with whatever is terrifying them. Perhaps that's why Jason Pierce sits side on to his audience, perhaps he just thinks he's got a really nice profile ... Regardless, there's something odd about watching a band set up in a U formation, leaving the traditional slot for a frontman vacant.

There is a fair size of crowd in attendance at the Oyster Stage, even though it's thin enough to walk through with ease. With mist rolling in from the loch, there's scarcely any wind to carry a fine drizzle over the reverent punters. The setting and weather, coupled with the utter tragedy of Pierce's lyrics, are deeply affecting and, in the case of one twenty-something man, quite overwhelming: as Pierce, beautifully backed by two gospel singers, delivers Soul On Fire, the man wells up, gulps and quickly pops on his aviator sunglasses. Sometimes, even in gloomy weather, shades have their uses.

BABYGOD - SPEAKEASY CAFE

Sometimes what you're hoping for at a festival actually happens - something spontaneous, a hidden gem. Such is the case with Babygod - or one of Babygod, the frontman Gerry Campbell. As he tells it, he was already at the festival, with an acoustic guitar in the boot of his car, but no gig lined up.

Now he's here, playing pared-down pop songs in the Speakeasy Cafe to a pacified early evening crowd. In just six songs, Campbell does what most bands have been trying to do so far this weekend: he commands attention. Each of the songs has been toured acoustically across Britain earlier this summer and are rigid in their beauty.

Forthcoming single Time works every bit as well (with differences) stripped back to the bone as the full Babygod version of the song - a seal of quality any decent writer and singer should aspire to. What began as a hubbub becomes, within about three chords, an ever-deepening hush (bar the heavy generic bass seeping in from nearby tents - and that's a shame).

A hunch says Campbell's sound could have filled one of the bigger stages at Hydro Connect and that everyone there would have been better off for it - that it filled this stage was an unexpected treat, and that's not a bad second best.

Your Sound Stage

The Your Sound stage is so new it hurts. It sits between two peddlers of ancient practices - the whisky tent and the massage area - and facing onto the castle. Every band that treads its painfully fresh boards is unsigned. If you're looking for the festival's springboard, as opposed to the deep pool of the Oyster Stage, this is where it is. And Glasgow's Zoey Van Goey have just somersaulted off it.

Not literally, of course, such physical activity would belie their bookish charm. But the trio of Kim Moore, Matt Brennan, and Michael John McCarthy have enchanted the large crowd, "the largest number of faces I've ever seen," says Moore from the stage. "It's scary. And wonderful too." Their coach isn't bad either. The band's first single, Foxtrot Vandals, was produced by that master of keenly observed, heart-breaking folky bon mots, Stuart Murdoch from Belle and Sebastian.

Murdoch watches from the audience throughout their 30 minute set, full of delicate songs about teaching English in Japan and hiding in basements. But for all the brand-spanking newness of the stage, the set ends in an old fashioned manner - it's Moore's birthday, so the crowd sing her happy birthday in the traditional style.

SPARKS How strange that it should take the two oldest men on any of the stages today to inject Hydro Connect with the youthful energy that has sometimes been lacking on the musical front. At 58 (or as close as biographical estimates have it), Russell Mael of Sparks gives it his all in the Unknown Pleasures tent for the full hour up to midnight. He has come prepared for a festival in a humid forest setting by the side of a Scottish loch, and soon is wiping sweat mixed with midge repellent from his eyes.

Throughout the set, his elder brother Ron sits stone-faced at a bank of keyboards at the front of the stage, or wanders around, interacting with the background projections, unsettling the audience with his unblinking stare. With his trousers hitched too high and his disapproving mouth drawn in tight, he's the most frightening maths teacher you never had. Like Bez of Happy Mondays, he can become the band's sole focal point even when he's contributing nothing specific to the music of the moment.

Truly, the Mael brothers are the Gilbert and George of pop music. They deliver the highlight show of day one, a theatrical slice of performance art that's crammed with fabulous musical hooks. Most of the crowd doesn't recognise the majority of songs that make up the set, but they're transfixed by every single note. When Sparks do play a big hit - This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us or a high-energy version of Number One Song All Over Heaven - it's as if the three decades between the songs' creation and their performance tonight have evaporated; they're fresh, vital and utterly brilliant.

It would be impossible to describe what Sparks sound like to anyone who hasn't heard them before. They're Sparks crossed with Sparks, with a bit of Sparks thrown in for good measure. Russell Mael's voice soars up and down into falsetto register with the smooth ease of a kid on a playpark swing, while his backing band skip from Weimar cabaret to 1970s disco to thrash metal in the blink of an eye. Strange Animal, second song in, is magnificent, with its spooky film backdrops of black-and-white tree-lined avenues and Nosferatu shadows. But it's Dick Around that has become the anthem of the day: "The sun goes up/The moon goes down/And all I do is dick around" - a festival itinerary for each and every one of us.

MERCURY REV Frontman Jonathan Donahue and Mercury Rev have been drenching their expansive music under waves of distortion and effects for nearly 20 years now. Their songs are musical magic eye pictures: stay with them long enough and something startling and beautiful sharply emerges from the fugue of noise. Just like Donahue's appearance. With the Guitars and Other Machines stage wreathed in smoke and the band hanging on a single note for a minor eternity, the singer suddenly burst through, seemingly appearing out of nowhere.

Donahue's voice was perfect for Hydro Connect. His brittle, unnervingly childlike tones rang around the magic forest surroundings. He would be perfect to read the macabre works of Edward Gorey. With lights blazing behind him, he threw shapes like Nosferatu working on his tan.

Deserters Songs is still their career high. The melancholic nursery rhymes of Opus 40, Holes and the encore of Goddess On A Highway pepper the set, each drew a huge cheer from the crowd. But it is The Dark Is Rising, from 2001's All is Dream, that packed the biggest punch, a song that actually sounds like the dream Donahue sings about, backed by an invisible heavenly chorus.

The effect combined to make an eerie and enchanting hour long set. It lifted the curtain on a drab world where Kasabian attract thousands, to take a peek into a fairy world. On the other side Mercury Rev are the musical laureates.

KASABIAN The field in front of the Oyster Stage is jam packed and anticipation is high. When Kasabian swagger on the roar is deafening - there are some doubters, true, but most people seem to think that this will be one of the weekend's highlights. And for a while it sounds like it might be.

The band bursts into Shoot The Runner, from second album Empire, and bodies become a unified mass, bouncing, chanting, punching the clouds above their heads. Fans of Kasabian were always going to love every minute of the set, splicing tracks from the band's eponymous first album and Empire.

With few exceptions, the early anthemic songs are received most warmly. Things nearly go off the rails with a run through of new track Fast Fuse from the band's as yet unreleased third album. ("Baby I was born with a short fuse" - ouch, what a clunker). Leicester-born frontman Tom Meighan - supported well by guitarist/vocalist Sergio Pizzorno in tight purple jeans - shouted "You're on good form for a f***ing Friday night" to rapturous applause. But the wall of sound cheering was absent from his later comment: "I f***ing love the jocks." As if aware of the faux pas, Meighan qualified his jibe with a weak: "I'm half Irish." After sagging in the middle - I.D was a particular exception - the set steadily regained its energy towards its end. What began as an unexpected, and well received, cover version of Candi Staton's You've Got The Love morphed seamlessly into into the riff everyone and their dogs had been waiting for. Club Foot, predictably, involved mass air punching coordinated "oosh"'s and could have been strung out for another half hour without too many complaints.

MANIC STREET PREACHERS Feather boas are wrapped around a microphone stand and there's a Welsh flag draped over the bass amps. This can only mean one thing - Dame Shirley Bassey is about to rip into Diamonds Are Forever on the Oyster Stage. No, of course not. It's the Manic Street Preachers, who take no time at all to launch into Faster.

Expanded to a five-piece these days - extra guitarist and keyboard player pushed to the left-hand side of the stage - they're keeping things safe by playing a festival-friendly, biggest-hits package. Your Love Is Not Enough goes down best out of the relatively recent material, but the heartiest crowd reactions are saved for the glories of old - Motorcycle Emptiness, You Stole The Sun From My Heart, Everything Must Go, You Love Us and If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next.

Singer James Dean Bradfield spreads dedications throughout the show. Little Baby Nothing is sung in praise of King Tut's in Glasgow. Motown Junk is for long-missing founder member Richey Edwards. Mostly, though, the set is for the entire Hydro Connect audience, as Bradfield is clearly very happy to be in Inveraray. "We've played all over Europe this summer - Russia, Poland, Latvia, Romania - but the best drive is the one from Glasgow Airport to here," he says to resounding cheers.

They also squeeze a couple of less expected moments into the set. Warning anyone who was just after the greatest hits to head to the bar for the duration of the next song, Bradfield then starts into Of Walking Abortion from The Holy Bible album, and it is indeed a moment for the true fans. Those less familiar with the darker corners of the Manics' back catalogue have the band's cover of Rhianna's Umbrella to make up for this specialist moment.

They end - no surprises - with Design For Life and bassist Nicky Wire landing a couple of scissor-kicks to match Pete Townsend in his heyday. Wire, in a fine white jacket, looks like he should be a dinner guest of the Duke of Argyll at the castle up the hill. That's until further inspection reveals the punk ornamentation on the jacket's sleeves. Maybe, being on stage, firing out some old rock classics, he's at the right end of the field after all.

CRYSTAL CASTLES This might not be the band that got the whole of Hydro Connect going, but the Unknown Pleasures tent, at least, was rocking to the loudest, most compulsive basslines so far. People for the first time begin to wig out, and it's glow sticks a go-go. Still, few out-move front woman Alice monitor speakers (The duo's set was curtailed at this year's Glastonbury because of Glass's wild stage antics and constantGlass, lit only occasionally but visible in silouette dancing wildly, throwing shapes on the stage diving).

The band's debut album, Crystal Castles, charted at number 47 earlier this year and every track played here is welcomed with cheers, sometimes screams, of recognition. The band funnels its raw energy through a heavy catalogue of samples, the distorted vocals screeched through reverb and always subservient to driving music. This is electro. This is thrash. This is punk. Crimewave, Alice Practice and Courtship Dating stand out as favourites, but nothing here is bad at all.

AMY MACDONALD Here's a question: is Amy Macdonald really wee, or is her guitar really big? Either way the 21-year-old is swamped by her instrument as she takes to the Oyster Stage. Beneath it though, its just about possible to see that she's wearing a kilt/skirt - not in Macdonald tartan, oddly enough.

She might warble a bit like a female Morrissey, but without a breath of wind on a surprisingly still Friday evening, the impressive sound set-up at Hydro Connect's main stage allows every note to be carried with amazing clarity.

The Duke Of Argyll looks on approvingly, even as one reveller starts to crowd surf and the front-of-stage security spike him to the floor when he falls into their iron grip. Though clearly enjoying himself, if that's the end of his festival, it seems like a wasted journey.

Macdonald, meanwhile, trots out a set that her fans lap up, despite a rather obvious pattern developing: two faster ones, one slow, repeat until close.

When she loses herself in the livelier ones, her wee knee begins to twitch; a musical tick something akin to Elvis, but with that giant guitar, it looks like she's creaking under its enormous weight. No one really minds though, even when she declares that anyone not recognising her cover of Billy Joel's We Didn't Start A Fire, is "an absolute disgrace." Having opened the inaugural festival last year, Macdonald has had a considerable promotion this time round. At this rate, it wouldn't be unreasonable to rule out a headline slot next year.

NOAH AND THE WHALE This year's festival has seen its site contracted - no longer do punters have to trek to the enormous (covered) shinty pitch for the Guitars And Other Machines stage. Instead, organisers have wisely moved it closer to the rest of the site and cut back on the sprawling expanse in front of the stage. Now facing some enormous, ancient trees, Guitars And Other Machines in a much more intimate, atmospheric arena.

Perhaps surprisingly, the first band to draw a considerable crowd to it are Noah And The Whale, despite their 5.30pm slot. "Are you enjoying your festival?" asked lead singer Charlie Fink, before responding to the predictable whoopin' and hollarin' with remarkable candour, "Hmm and we're only the third band on - it must be good."

The masses enjoy the set well enough: suitably reverent during the more melancholy melodies and fervently jigging for the lively ho-downs.

Recent hit 5 Years Time is especially well received, though the Londoners ignore the tradition of saving the best for last. Satiated, the crowd immediately begin to leave as the final - and considerably less well known - song comes on. Still, no one seems to be complaining