Offset Festival is a curious affair. It's most definitely a niche festival sporting the likes of Wire and Gang of Four, as well as acts like Ipso Facto, Prinzhorn Dance School and Young Knives. If you're not destined to be an Offset goer, you'll be left asking "who?", but that's fair enough, it isn't designed for everyone, although the Guitar Hero Rock Stage does seem to be a strange compensation for the fact that not everyone likes electro indie music. Set in a pretty park in Essex, the festival boasts relatively easy links to central London and as such attracts lots of day ticket holders, making the campsite rather small and a little quiet, so this is not a top party festival. The DIY ethos also means that there are technical problems with the smaller stages running a little late on Sunday and a PA problem wreaking havoc on Saturday, but this is all to be expected and there are enough stages within a 20 second walk for you to be able to mix and match bands happily.

If you're heading to Offset from the London area you're bound to bump into enough people that you know and the festival is so small that you'll see them from across the small field on plenty of occasions and perhaps even get the chance to drag them to the fairground. Offset offers everything you need at a festival: a nice setting, a variety of music and a good sprinkling of places to eat and drink, with the added bonuses of a better dressed crowd than usual because of the amount of day trippers, and some really good bands in a pretty intimate setting.