We Brits do like to be beside the seaside, and what better way to escape to the coast than by incorporating a festival into a long weekend.

Brighton is a prime location for such jaunts - more youthful and sophisticated than the UK's other seaside resorts, and with an unfair advantage when it comes to bars, restaurants and late-night clubs.

This is reflected in choice of the south coast favourite as host for Europe's best new band festival, The Great Escape.

The pick of a new breed of urban music festivals, where a stellar lineup of up-and-coming bands are joined by a handful of more established acts, it follows in the footsteps of the Camden Crawl but in better surroundings, better venues and with a better lineup.

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A highlight of Brighton's month-long arts festival in May, it's a coinicidence that it conincides with the celebrations - organiser Martin Elbourne, who also books the main three stages at Glastonbury as well as a host of other huge events, found a gap in the festival schedule when most of his big events are sewn up and he can cherry pick the discoveries they have made over the previous year, as well as convincing a few bigger names to head the bill.

We soon realise, having dashed down from London hoping to be in time for some hot Thursday night acts, that getting to see your favourite buzz bands is not going to be easy. You have to get to a venue early in the evening for the biggest names, sitting through support acts and therefore missing the chance to venue-hop - the big headliners are generally on at 10pm across all venues, to spread out the crowd and ensure people check out less well known acts.

So arriving for New New art-rockers Vampire Weekend at the MTV2 party an hour before they go on is a no-no - despite being in Concorde 2, the most cavernous venue featured in the festival, we are already a good two hours late.

There's a delegates queue that gets slight priority, on the basis they pay more for tickets and are generally involved in the music industry so are either writing about the bands or looking to book them for gigs or sign them to labels. But the advantage is minimal - good for normal fans - and it's a pointless one in, one out situation.

It's disappointing for those who don't know the score and buy a ticket hoping to see 3-4 big headliners over the weekend as well as a mix of newer acts across a few venues each night, but it seems to be the only way to disperse a crowd of 10,000 people reasonably equally across the city.

On Friday we are geared up for an earlier start with a priority list of must-see bands.

The Levis Ones to Watch® gig provides a highlight for 100 lucky competition winners, who get to see American indie-rockers We Are Scientists on a small elevated stage built in the outdoor area of the Audio venue - with free drinks and a barbecue to boot. Those in the know who weren't lucky enough to get in easily get a decent view and listen from the beer garden of the neighbouring bar.

As they bowl through a tight selection of melodic anthems, including singalong hits like After Hours and, aptly, The Great Escape, singer Keith Murray asks that they should tell their mum's they love them if the stage collapses. The weather holds out and it's a fine start to the day's proceedings an hour or two before the programme proper gets started for the evening.

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