Joy Orbison / Crookers/ Mystery Jets @ Lovebox Festival

A fat man in a pink polo shirt picks up a big brown boulder and starts chomping down on it, spitting chunks of foam onto the floor. Although dismantling the scenery may be frowned upon at most festivals, the Lovebox security guards are too busy skanking to Cooly G as she gets the Rizla Arena swaying like reeds in a breeze to her dubstep remix of Willie Williams ‘Armagideon Time’.

Over on the favela-style Jose Cuervo stage, Latin Dub Soundsystem’s bongo-flecked samba beats provide the perfect soundtrack for the crowd to don Colombian drug-dealer hats and soak up the sun and free margaritas. Round the corner, the NYC Downlow sits underneath a leftover chunk of some wrecked future city. Inside, MJ Cole blends old and new garage and treats the crowd to 2-step classic ‘Sincere’.

Waiting impatiently on the sidelines, Joy Orbison flexes his fingers, clearly itching to get behind the decks. “You have to wait for it see….anticipation stations,” says his MC when they finally take to the stage, Orbison relishing the chance to prove himself worthy of the hype. He nearly stumbles when he momentarily knocks himself out of sync, but saves the day with the sumptuous ‘Hyph Mngo’.

Mystery Jets play a consummate set as the sun goes down, although some elements of the crowd decide to shun songs from their latest album Serotonin. They aren’t missed though - there’s enough love here for any band to bask in. Although The Maccabees are on next, the kaleidoscopic vortex of the Rizla Arena again exerts its unnatural pull, and its time for Todd Edwards, who apes his murderous namesake Sweeney Todd by chopping ‘No Place Like London’ into some skewiff cheese-dance.

For the first time in its seven-year history Lovebox expanded this year, spreading the festivities over three days. Whether it really needed to is another matter. Although free of crushes and queues, many stages feel sparsely attended, leaving the nagging feeling that all the fun is happening somewhere else.

And it is. Deep in the bowels of the Relentless stage, all manner of freakiness is going on. With a giant silver flower made from mirror shards sprouting out the floor and refracting lasers every which way, Crookers deliver a brain-meltingly brilliant barrage of sight and sound. It’s like being a pinball bounced around a steel drum, locked inside a mirrorball. As the stern-faced duo segue into Lion King theme tune ‘Nants Ingonyama’, their entourage stand with arms aloft behind them bathed in orange light. Punters stumble away, warm in the knowledge they have just witnessed something not of this world, something elemental and somehow empyrean.