Home Arena

Homelands Ireland 2000 review

When the gates opened, the crowd poured into the massive big-top that was Home, and straight on to Lush: Col Hamilton had it sown up for the early birds.

With the arrival of Headrock Valley Beats, some of the new arrivals stayed, and the crowd began to build. Mark Kavanagh put in a storming set, and succeeded in bringing some atmosphere to this tent - about the only time we saw it in full swing all day.

Meeker - signed to Darren Emmerson's Underwater label - were interesting, and although other attractions were demanding our attention, the brief bit we caught sounded good: it's now on our "check-it-out" list for Homelands England.

Pete caught the Dope Smugglaz, and returned with a huge smile and the comment "great": there was now so much going on around the site there was barely time to draw breath before taking in the next sensation.

For the final acts, given that there were choices including Paul Hartnoll, Darren Emerson and Carl Cox in the Redbox/Influx arena; Col Hamilton's double with John Ceccini followed by Nick Warren in Lush; not to mention the awesome sounds at Shine/BBM, the Home arena was definitely not the place to be between 8pm and midnight.

Indeed, the question that struck when first seeing the line-ups was what Ian Brown and, arguably, Primal Scream were doing amongst the big names headlining the event. Don't get us wrong, Screamadelica is on the list of all time favourites and the Stone Roses are a classic, but this was a dance festival and Primal Scream and Ian Brown are just not dance music - well certainly not this kind of dance music. Partly this reflects disappointment with their recent offerings compared with their earlier master works, but mainly because it didn't really seem to fit.

Sure, loads of Primal and Ian Brown fans enjoyed the sets but it really just didn't work. Ian Brown's set was pretty much as you'd expect, delivered in a typically laid-back, almost laconic way. Whether he really is the coolest guy on the planet or simply believes that he is we don't know. But quite honestly it left us pretty cold and much of the rest of the crowd - filling only about half the tent, and shrinking as time passed - seemed to feel the same way.

A technical glitch interrupted Ian Brown's set and gave the perfect excuse to disappear elsewhere. The computer failure lasted for around a quarter of an hour apparently, and Brown came back to finish his set.

Back to Home for Primal Scream: they started with Swastika Eyes, Pete realising that he'd been hoping that seeing them live would have awoken a deeper understanding of Xtrmntr. It didn't work and he remains convinced that it is a profoundly disappointing album that would have received little attention had it been a debut. Even Movin'On Up failed to really get the crowd going. Now this may all be due to a guilt-trip because he'd managed to sleep through their entire set at Glasto in 1998 (for reasons he won't reveal) or it is simply a personal thing but that's what he thinks.

David Holmes's DJ set in between Primal Scream and Leftfield was another disappointment. He features highly in our collections: we love his own stuff, especially 'Let's Get Killed'. Somehow he didn't quite hit the spot - or maybe it was the perception that he was just filling in time between the two headline bands that meant that the crowd didn't get off on it. The atmosphere was totally flat before he started, and not much better at the end. This wasn't his fault - this was a bad slot to have to play.

Compared to Primal Scream and Ian Brown, Leftfield delivered the goods. Read the review (with photo's) here.