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The curtain on Triptych came down on a non-Bank Holiday Sunday night with a service from Detroit wizard Theo Parrish. Not the biggest crowd you’ve ever seen but from the moment the Parrish Priest hit the turntables around 1 you could see they meant business. A motley crew of Parrish obsessives, shandy-drinking Houseboys, sleazy grope monkeys, party casualties and some old heads in obscure Detroit t-shirts all started getting down to Parrish’s mindbending selection of jazz, disco, funk, techno, hip hop and house. Late on during a particularly intriguing jazzy funky section as Parrish’s hands fluttered around the EQ building drama and grinning merrily as the crowd went politely bananas a guy beside me asked me if I knew what record he was playing. I couldn’t quite place anything (apart from the hefty selection of Parrish’s own productions) in the set- it was like that Billy Connolly sketch about someone saying a comedian’s performance was hilarious despite being unable to recall any of the jokes.

This was a serious trip into a music lovers mind and the majority of the crowd seemed happy to allow for fuckups that would have ruined most other big name guest sets. About an hour into the set a mystery power failure knocked out the mixer- this was resolved within five minutes where the crowd decided to create their own erratic little Sound Signature drum loops by stamping their feet and a couple of particularly lubricated fans struck up a halfhearted chorus of “Young Hearts, Run Free” (they looked like they’d been out on the town since Candi Staton’s gig at the Bongo on Friday). The music returned and off we went again through spacey UR-ey techno before a trademark tempo drop into some beautiful jazzy/discoey numbers. Parrish was rummaging around under the decks at one stage when the record he was playing just ran out. Ironic cheers but no real animosity as a sheepish Parrish blithely popped up from behind the decks and just put the track back on. Other DJ’s would have been pilloried for this little faux-pas but you get the feeling that no-one was that upset. There were a number of mixing disasters but again you got the sense that none of this really mattered all that much.

Parrish is a DJ in the old style, playing a range of tracks and tempos to bring people on a journey. You do suspect that some punters did feel a bit let down by the lack of showstopping tricks on display as the crowd thinned from 3am. The final hour was a complete masterclass in building expectation using music that you doesn’t scream “dancefloor” with a load of spacey jazz music and a couple of Parrish favourites (people were actually singing along to drum loops at this stage!!) before a beautiful 15 minute version of what sounded like an Erykah Badu track followed by a sweet soulful a capella at the end. Most other DJ’s end with a bang, Parrish’s stubborn allegiance to his sound made for an extended and emotional goodbye both to Parrish and to a festival that has brought such luminaries as David Mancuso, Nicky Siano, Kenny Dixon and Parrish to Scotland for the last year and this was an apposite if low-key end to proceedings.

As I walked home I was reminded of a party in Dublin years ago at which myself and a pal of mine were DJing. Early on we were playing a Moodymann record. We were approached by a woman who stormed up to us and roared “Play us something we can fucking come up on”. This struck us as both tragic and hilarious at the time and it’s become a sort of in-joke whenever we hear a DJ rapidly change tempo after losing the floor. Parrish’s selections mightn’t be to everyone’s taste, the music might be too “deep”, too reverential, too connected to an obscure and personal musical history, the mixing might be offhand and varied in quality but the man knows how to play the shit out of his record collection. He’s playing these records because he loves them and that was more than enough to make the evening memorable.

Smack my 'tych up.

So goodbye then Triptych. Since I first saw your natty posters and groovy lineups I've enjoyed your all too brief appearances on the schedules. Sure, your publicity did consistently and hilariously overegg the pudding, your tickets were pricey, you never brought in the weekend ticket I desperately craved and the Weejies kept all the good gigs but hey, it was fun while it lasted.

The world and its ma is doing a Triptych "memories" feature so I thought why don't I.

Best 5 gigs:

1. Wire/Liars/Pan Sonic all on the same bill? The best Wednesday night I've ever attended. Despite the hour and a half wait for Wire to start. Pan Sonic lay the bedrock for an evening of scary madness with juddering sub bass, Liars in full-on Blair Witch mode clatter and moan and squeal, then Wire lead a singalong in a room full of misty eyed drunk old men. All for 14 quid.

2. Animal Collective. Miles down a bill which included Explosions in the Sky (or as a wag in the crowd called them "I can't believe they're no Mogwai") and Four Tet, Animal Collective breezed through Sung Tongs and I fell in love with them. One of those moments when a band you've never heard of before suddenly gives you flowers. Also notable for the experience of seeing a very earnest drunken man give someone from Explosions in the Sky a bollocking for being "middle class white music" and that the "real shit" was downstairs where the Soul Jazz Soundsystem were playing. I'm not a fan of EITS but his response to this lord of irony("Hey, fuck you buddy, nobody's making you listen") made me love them a just a tiny bit.

3. LCD Soundsystem/Hot Chip- A fantastic night at the late lamented Venue. Hot Chip seemed like the cutest thing I'd ever seen- like a cross between Belle and Sebastian and the Happy Mondays. A few hours later the place was rammed, the busiest I'd ever seen the venue and James Murphy and Co were tearing the roof off with their version of "Throw".

4. John Peel playing Teenage Kicks to a mixed crowd of techno nutters and reggae fiends a few months before his untimely death. Knifehandchop melting heads upstairs, Dr Alimantado being the Best Dressed Chicken in Town.

5. Maher Shalal Hash Baz. 2 days before I got married, my last weekend of "freedom" was a weekend to myself with a fistful of tickets to Triptych gigs. Watching this band, like the gentlest version of the Fall ever, you got a sense of the joy of discovery, of learning and friendship. If you get the opportunity to see this band drop everything and go!

Best memories:
1. Dancing with my pals when Optimo's DJ Twitch played their track just after LCD went off stage and the whole crowd went absolutely mental.

2. The hilarious publicity hyperbole. The 'Knee is right, pick ANY band- a veritable smorgasboard of superlatives!

3. Getting to see Madlib and Jaydee rip it up in the Venue.

4. Having a shite after Pan Sonic had rearranged my bowels.

5. Seeing Bob Moog and Jean Jacques Perry in conversation in the Queens Hall.

Biggest disappointments:
1. No shows. Danger Mouse, Matthew Herbert, Juan Atkins, Cannibal Ox. For shame!

2. Greedy Weejies: For keeping ESG, Model 500, Rhythm & Sound, Aphex, Derrick May, DJ Pierre, David Mancuso and countless others.

3. That Madlib and Dilla never got on the decks despite their constant reminding of the crowd that "we're just DJ's". And that Quasimoto turned out to be the "Very Special Guest".

4. The overreliance of a shallow pool of Glaswegian band talent. Triptych didn't really do anything for emerging Scottish artists over the lifetime of the festival.

5. The absence of a "Festival Ticket" that would have enabled festival goers to go to everything without having to pay for tickets and booking fee for every gig.

This weekend I'm off to see Jah Shaka, Theo Parrish and hopefully the RZA.

Goodbye Triptych, here's hoping we come up with some other way of luring maverick geniuses to Central Scotland!