YOU wouldn’t usually associate architectural splendour with music festivals.

But Boom Town’s many stages are works of staggering ambition, equally as impressive as the wondrous sounds emanating from them. With an immense vine-covered Mayan temple and a full-size pirate ship, to name but two, the look of the place alone is jaw-dropping.

The Downtown area, complete with metallic palace, skyscrapers and giant ghetto blaster, offers DJ sets of mostly hardcore jungle drum and bass but with a smattering of electronic urban dance music sub-genres.

Old Town hosts a wide range of gypsy-ska-punk type outfits while reggae is ever present, not only as a massive influence on such genres but also in its pure form, with legendary acts such as Stephen Marley, Cutty Ranks and Barrington Levy on the bill.

The sound of the Balkans has had a huge impact on many of the English bands here and, repaying the compliment, there’s a plethora of eastern European bands clearly influenced by the English punk scene.

The Bosnian Dubioza Kolektiv provide a massive, life-affirming burst of energy that infuses Balkan scales and melodies into a sound and ethos that’s pure punk, complete with some wonderfully demented sax riffs.

The Antwerp Gypsy Ska Orkestra are another, an ensemble of musicians — “formerly illegal,” according to their website — from Serbia to Chile, whose rendition of the gypsy punk staple Kalashnikoff is the most blisteringly raucous I’ve ever heard.French gyp-hop duo Soviet Suprem perform a more anthemic electro take on the genre — think the Red Army Choir meets the Prodigy, only with rapping.

But the absolute kings of the Gypsy punk tradition remain Gogol Bordello, who tear up the Old Town on Sunday night with a 90-minute mass in praise of unbridled joy, love and solidarity.

Interspersed with the odes to sex and alcohol is a paean to the plight of the immigrant and a suitable riposte to Cameron’s current plans to blow them out of the Mediterranean: “In corridors full of tear gas/Our destinies change every day/Like deleted scenes from Kafka/Flushed down the bureaucratic drain/But if you give me the invitation/To hear the bells of freedom chime/To hell with your double standards/We coming rougher every time.”

In this setting, high-energy dance combos such as Transglobal Underground or Amadou and Mariam feel like the aural equivalent of putting your feet up with a cup of cocoa.

Yet they provide welcome respite from the hecticity that reigns all around and still have the ability to tingle the spine and bob the head.

Electro-swing, this year’s big thing, does exactly what it says on the tin —imagine listening to your funkiest Detroit house record while The Jungle Book is on — and Saturday night headliners Caravan Palace prove themselves masters of the genre.

Their hard shuffling beats, looped clarinet riffs and deliciously vacuous lyrics are undeniably fun and you’re immediately transported back to the 1930s, with an economic crisis raging and the world lurching towards global war, while the affluent middle classes figure “fuck it, let’s party.” Much like now, in fact.

One of the highlights is Mykal Rose from Black Uhuru. Performing on the Sunday morning after all the relentless party-party hedonism of most of the rest of the acts, it’s a relief to hear music with something to say.

The band emerged in the 1980s as part of a culture of resistance to the rising tide of greed and individualism that was the ideological counterpart of Thatcherite economics and classics such as Solidarity, Spongi Reggae and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner are as powerful as ever.

Mykal’s voice has, if anything, only improved with age, making him easily the most soulful act of the weekend.

“Give thanks and praise for health, strength and vitality” he beseeches the bleary-eyed and hungover crowd. It’s certainly something he has in spades — but I can’t vouch for the rest of us.