Leftfield

Homelands England 2000 review

Leftfield headlined Homelands this year playing the Home Arena at 9.30pm. I regrettably missed the beginning and joined it rocking with Storm 3000 which was followed by Inspection (check one) both from their impeccable first album Leftism.

The arena was packed with more people still trying to get in, and the crowd were loud - cheering, screaming and blowing air horns, but not as loud as Leftfield themselves who had always promised the volume would be up. They worked the crowd, building us up with thumping sounds and then spent time sending deep deep vibrations through the arena - 'feel it' we were told repeatedly and he massaged his belly as if the sound would feed us. The ground reverberated beneath us as it got louder still and we were told to 'Let the music take control'. The track to do this was the pounding Afrika Shox from the latest album Rhythm and Stealth.

The lighting throughout was red and purple with strobe effects all around and at chosen moments a single white light fanned out from behind them reaching up into the arena. Song of Life from the first album was the last track which moves from soothing vocals to thumping rhythm and back again and as it finished the lights were turned on the crowd and they screamed for more. Their reward was of course Phat Planet (from that ad) with the running horses video shown on the screens.

It had energy, it rocked!