Homelands Festival, The Matterley Bowl, Winchester, UK 

Homelands is a huge British Dance Festival held at The Matterley Bowl in Winchester every year.

Homelands Review...

An exuberant set by The Loose Cannons and a reliable dose of quality from Faithless proved that in spite of a slow start at Matterley Bowl, dance music's health is in tip-top condition

If it hadn’t been for yet another punishing hike up the Matterley bowl mountain, it would have been easy to mistake the first couple of hours at this year’s Homelands for part of a drowsy day at The Big Chill.

The first major festival of began not with a detonation of MDMA fuelled frenzy but instead slowly breezed into being at an altogether more leisurely pace. In line with the current trend of combining riffs and beats, Stateless were first up but ambled into the live arena with little more than friends and family for support. Bit of a shame this as their soporific grooves, which were recently highlighted on Radio One’s Unsigned Playlist, could well be a catalyst for what shall now be officially known as the nu trip-rock revolution. Catchy, ain’t it? Even a dim-witted roadie couldn’t put the dampeners on DJ Shadow inspired numbers such as set-starter Prism#1 and potential single-to-be, Exit, as he relentlessly hammered away with a huge sledgehammer in the photo pit for the opening five minutes. This understandably left some punters confused, as they ran in expecting some new hybrid of industrial techno only to be greeted by West Yorskhire’s answer to Radiohead.

Meanwhile, across the field, Chris Coco, who it has to be said, doesn’t seem to mind being scheduled at times of the day when nobody actually listens to him, gently teased those strolling past Radio One’s Pyramid Stage with a trademark selection of leftfield smoking anthems. With an equally downbeat reggae-tinged soundtrack drifting from the Strongbow Room’s Sombrero Sound System it was only when a curious head was poked into the Movement Tent’s menacing gloom that a couple of limbs began to involuntarily twitch. Rather than the type of festival-goer that say they’re ‘pacing’ themselves whilst sipping gingerly at half a cider, the drum ‘n’ bass tent is more like a Burberry clad scally who ingests everything around them before self-destructing in spectacular fashion on the dancefloor. This is more like it. Thank you, Mr Danny Wheeler for being the first to inject some life into the party.