Melt festival celebrates 21 years with its biggest party to date

If anyone should be entrusted to throw a twenty-first to remember - and at times so fab you can't - it's Melt. For the past twenty years the festival – now set in the old coal city of Ferropolis - has hosted international acts as groundbreaking as its excavators and mined Germany's dance scene for raw sources of talent.

The festival itself runs like a party. Each day of Melt starts late and fills-up even later, peaking at the not so wee hours of the morning.

Its warped set times mixed with its relentless schedules (the aptly named Sleepless Floor lasts for all seventy-two hours of the festival) makes it ideal if you're a night-owl or a morning person – as long as you're also a voluntary insomniac. Time becomes subjective: in the space of a few minutes, a man falls asleep standing up on the MeltSelektor beach, while another saunters by walking a piggy bank as if on a morning dog walk.

The late starts ensure that by the time it gets to the headliner each night, the main stage's pit has an abundant yield of punters. Although musically different, all three headline acts are as loved-up as they are loved by the crowd.

Florence and The Machine's Renaissance aesthetic and calls to “hold hands with the stranger next to you” is like a recital of John Dunne's love poems on E, while Oliver from The xx declares that “there is one word to describe you lot – sexy” before the slinking grooves of 'Loud Places' gets hearts racing more than Sebastian Vettel after a litre of Club Mate.

It's a similar (love) story for every other part of the festival, where pre-party, party and after-party melt into one unholy trinity.

The new House of Presents gifts the festival a dedicated LGBT space of drag-queen debauchery and their closing cover of 'The Chain' gets everyone (and perhaps, for the stripping stage stealing stranger, too much) in the mood. Meanwhile, the gospel-tinged euphoria of Black Madonna's set and the sonic serotonin rush of Palms Trax's groovy selections prove that love is – along with the LED jellyfish umbrellas and mini confetti sprays – in the air.

This loved-up celebration is fiercely inclusive and all walks, swaggers, struts and runs of life are part of the party. There are ravers younger than the festival itself, OAPs going OTT, drag kings and queens and foreign punters stocked up on enough glitter to max-out their cabin bag allowance. It's clear then that the best thing about Melt is that everyone's invited to the party