Overview 1

On 28th May 2005, somewhere in a field in Hampshire, the UK festival season opened once again with We Love...Homelands. The Winchester-based dance event, which officially marks the start of the Summer for festival-lovers, branched out into even more eclectic territory this year with many surprising performers on a line-up historically dominated by superstar DJs and dance acts.

In a recent press release We Love...Homelands professed to be “the UK’s most innovative, inclusive and forward-thinking festival”, but in the run up to the event many formerly loyal hard-dance-loving Homelands fans expressed unease at the festival’s radical change of focus. Late additions to the line-up such as the notorious Pete Doherty and his band Babyshambles were seen by some as a cynical attempt by We Love... and Mean Fiddler shift more tickets, while others protested that rock-orientated guitar acts such as The Bravery and Beck had no place on the bill at a dance festival.

While the festival’s increasingly musically diverse direction may have left some hard dance purists cold, a new audience of more open-minded dance fans were well up for enjoying the changes at We Love…Homelands. This May Bank Holiday the weather was fine, the music was pumping and the crowd were loving it. We arrived to find bright sunshine and swiftly filling arenas.



Our first stop was the Live Arena to catch hotly tipped New York electro rockers, The Bravery, whom many have compared to Duran Duran and New Order. Arriving late onstage, the band delivered a very competent set to a relatively large crowd, rocking through previous hits Honest Mistake and Unconditional. The band looked good onstage and were well-received by the crowd. Audio Bullies, an act I thoroughly enjoyed at Homelands 2003, were up next, opening with their rework of Nancy Sinatra’s Bang Bang (I Shot You Down). This brief teaser went down exceptionally well with the dancing crowd, which gathered in numbers throughout the set. Frontman Simon Franks was energetic as always as the three-piece ran through tracks from 2003’s Ego War album, as well as many new ones, ending the set with another jubilant rendition of crowd-rocker, Bang Bang.



As usual, come 6pm there were some difficult line-up decisions to be made. Homelands is notorious for its line-up clashes, time-tabling its most popular acts at the same times, often far too early in the day, and this was the case once again in 2005. We had only just begun to get into the ever-reliable Scratch Perverts in Kiss Arena 4, when we realised that Homelands favourites, 2 Many DJs, were also playing in Arena 1. We ran across the site to find the crowd far thinner than in previous years, with many asking why the Belgian electro-eclecticists were on so early in the day. Their set was as much fun as I have come to expect, but the atmosphere was definitely lacking.



Roots Manuva was our next stop, once again in the Live Arena. Having seen the grimey UK hiphopper rock the crowd once already this year on his UK tour, we were eager to see what he would deliver at Homelands, and Rodney Smith and crew did not dissapoint. Firing through recent hits Too Cold and Colossal Insight, before finishing with old favourites, Witness The Fitness and a crowd sing-a-long of Dreamy Days, Roots and Co. thoroughly redeemed themselves after their last disappointing Homelands performance in the Drum n Bass arena, which was dogged by sound problems and eventually abandoned all together in 2002. This year, Roots Manuva left the Live Arena crowd jumping.



After a brief refuelling stop, it was time for U.S. musical innovator Beck’s exclusive performance, once again in the Live Arena. Although I am usually a big fan of the electro alt-rocker, this performance failed to inspire me, even with the inclusion of old favourites such as Devil’s Haircut, and after a few songs we wandered off to see what else was on offer.

We caught the end of Jazzy Jeff’s old-school party hiphop set in Kiss Arena 4, which was funky as hell and really good fun, before moving on to the Bacardi B-Bar where we stumbled across another fantastic party set from Eddy Temple Morris. Although I had heard of this DJ, this was my first experience of his rock and beats mash-up style, and I will certainly remember his name in future: the B-Bar crowd loved it and we did too!

Headlining the Live Arena this year were urban beat poets, The Streets, returning for another top billing after 2003’s generally well-received Homelands performance. Personally, I was not a particular fan of their 2003 set, but I was impressed by the improvement in The Streets’ stage presence. Mike Skinner teased the crowd about their abilities to last out the whole night between songs like Dry Your Eyes Mate, Don’t Mug Yourself, and Push It Forward, feeding brandy to scantily clad girls in the front row, before stopping for a mid-set rest on a sofa in the middle of the stage, leaving the crowd to watch The Irony of It All video. While I was far from blown away, musically speaking, this live set was very competent and really good fun.



A leisurely walk around the site found us back at the Bacardi B-Bar, watching a set by live downbeat ensemble, Tortured Soul. We could hardly see the band on the low stage, but their chilled out sound was lovely, although a little too lovely for midnight we decided, and moved on in search of something a bit harder. Blackstrobe (Dex n FX) in Arena 5 pulled us in with their dark and dirty electro sounds, but the thin crowd lacked atmosphere and we moved on again.

In previous years I have spent all-night dancing to drum n bass in the Movement Arena 3, and a quick trip in there for Bryan Gee vs. Jumpin Jack Frost reminded me just why. The Movement sound system was easily one of the most impressive at this year’s festival and inside the tent was rammed with hot sweaty bodies, dancing beneath the impressive green lazer show. The atmosphere in this tent was blinding as Bryan Gee banged out some grimy grimy tunes for the enthusiastic crowd. LTJ Bukem & MC. Conrad took to the decks next, but Bukem’s more ambient and intelligent sounds did not follow on well from the dirty bass that had gone before, and we were not the only people leaving the tent as his set got going. Bukem is a great producer whose music I enjoy immensely, but the Good Lookin’ DJ’s deep and chilled sounds would have been better suited to an early morning set.

Starting to flag already, we caught the tail-end of New Yorker Miss Kittin’s set in Arena 1, which was every bit as dirty and spikey as you could hope. The electro-house DJ played to a substantial crowd, warming them up nicely for my top set of the night from Fingerlickin’ breakbeat duo, The Plump DJs. The rotund Homelands favourites were on fine form, whacking out a selection of especially funked-up and bass-heavy new school breaks to an appreciatively rocking mob of dance fans as the lights and lazers went into overdrive above our heads. This was to be our last set of the evening, as the effects of a long day and the cold caught up to us in earnest, but this banging set from the Plumps ended our night in style. The festival season is officially open for business – let’s hope the rest of the Summer has as much to offer as this year’s We Love...Homelands!

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