Tom tom club

The hiccup of The Slits’ no-show on day one of Club Uncut’s residency at Brighton’s Great Escape didn’t dampen spirits for last night’s more typically full-on and varied affair.

Club Uncut has decamped to the seaside for the duration of The Great Escape, the three-day festival in which mostly new bands fill Brighton’s plentiful pubs and clubs. Our weekend starts, though, with a disappointment, when The Slits are a late cancellation, leaving a contingent of Northern Irish girls I meet here specifically to see them in a mood of gloomy resentment.

Not one to apply layers of personal mystification to his music, the Cambridge musician C Joynes is telling the crowd at Club Uncut about his phlegm issues. Personable enough, he’s also a terrific guitarist, albeit one who it’d be more or less impossible to write about without mentioning John Fahey (which I did last time, writing about his, ahem, “Revenants, Prodigies And The Restless Dead”).

“It’s hot as a witch's tit in this room,” says Club UNCUT headliner Jesca Hoop. “I’m going to have to retune my guitar real quick… cos it sounds like a witch's tit. So if you’ve ever wondered what a witch's tit sounds like, then this is it.” Today has been the hottest day of the year so far in the capital. Despite the welcoming evening cool outside, temperatures in the newly-refurbished Upstairs At The Garage in north London are unforgivingly high. But in some respects, you couldn’t have wished for a better line-up at Club UNCUT in heat like this.

See Tom Waits' former nanny, plus support from Simone White

Summer Sundae reveals line-up for Saturday July 25

The Week That Was and Crystal Antlers also performed at Uncut's nights at the Brighton festival

Banjo Or Freakout open the last of Uncut's nights at The Great Escape, perhaps the weirdest line-up of the weekend, with a pretty uncompromising set.

Club Uncut is back at The Great Escape, and this year proceedings are taking place in the civilised surroundings of the Pavilion Theatre.

Tom Waits' former nanny visits the UK in June