Delightful: Phoenix, at All Points East, reviewed

A few years ago, my nephew informed me that he and his friend were planning to come up to London for the weekend for the Wireless Festival. Did they need somewhere to stay? He looked at me like I was a mad old man. No, of course not. They were going to camp. In Finsbury Park. Because when you go to festivals, you camp. Thankfully, he didn’t turn up on the Victoria Line with his tent and then wonder why no one else was similarly equipped.

Inner-city festivals such as Wireless and All Points East are almost always a series of single-day events. APE is a ruthlessly programmed festival. Rather than try to be all things to all people, each day is targeted at some section of the festival-going population. This year, there were two days for people who wanted to dance (headlined by Kaytranada and Loyle Carner) on the first weekend, then over the bank holiday weekend, one for teenage girls and young women (Mitski), one for maturing hipsters (LCD Soundsystem) and one almost exclusively for people who listen to BBC Radio 6 Music (Death Cab For Cutie and the Postal Service).

I went for sections of the latter two. What interested me about the hipster day was Jai Paul, who was headlining the second stage. You may very well not have heard of Paul, for in a career lasting more than a decade he has released four singles, recorded one album – which was leaked and then not officially released for several years – and only played live a handful of times. Nevertheless, there is a chunk of the music press that regards him as something of a demigod, a veritable prince of the north-west London suburbs.