A Campingflight To Lowlands Paradise 2001, Biddinghuizen (NL)
August 24th-26th, 2001

Thursday
Lowlands kicked off on Thursday the 23rd of August; around six pm the gates opened for an anxious (and large) crowd looking forward to spending the next few days on the grassy grounds in Biddinghuizen. An estimated 6,000 people were already waiting to be the first ones to enter the campsite.



With the Lowlands campsite having the same layout as last year, most people knew that campsites 2 and 3 were the best places to be - but the organisation didn't want to open these sites until campsite 1 was filled. And so the first confrontations of the weekend were a fact. After getting into the campsite - an effort that could easily take about three hours - the pitching of tents began. Here and there, large clusters of tents emerged, while others chose to set up their tent away from everybody else. Not that it mattered much; at the beginning of nightfall most of the campsites 1, 2, 3 and 4 were already crowded and you had to take heed not to trip over the guy-ropes (why the hell do they make those things black anyway?). The rest of the night, due to a lack of entertainment of any sorts, could only be spent by either drinking, doing drugs, or a combination of both. Which most people did.

Friday
The Friday kicked off late in the afternoon (4pm, to be exact). The Golf and Charlie tents had the honours of having the opening bands, My Vitriol and ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead respectively. I chose to start with My Vitriol first, and I had to admit I was very pleasantly surprised. My Vitriol plays so-called 'emotional pop-rock', although I would rather say they sounded like a heavier version of Muse. More wicked and insane than Muse, and perhaps a little less subtle, this band is a fine recommendation to anyone. So after a good 30 minutes, I strolled over to Charlie to catch the last 15 minutes of Trail Of Dead. Their Motorpsycho-copied music sounded reasonably fine, but not very special or original. Still, for a festival-band they definitely sounded good and judging by the crowd’s reaction I wasn't the only one to think this. On the Dommelsch stage, Californian act Zebrahead was already playing. Their mix between rock, hiphop, punk and nu-metal sounded more than horrible and I would definitely rate them 'most them disappointing band of the festival' in hindsight - I cannot understand that people actually fall for this music. A look at the small amount of people actually listening, my point was proven. Please guys, come up with something better...



Spineshank cancelled at the last minute, and I missed out on the replacement act in order to get some food, but I settled myself at the grass next to the Alpha stage not to miss the first big act of Lowlands: Tricky. Even though I am not a big fan of his music on album, I do appreciate what he's doing and I am convinced he is a very talented musician indeed. My expectations, considering his performance, were duly met; the sound was good, the songs were solid, and with the hot weather Tricky gave us perfect chill-out music. I dozed off after three-quarters of the set, then took a walk over the terrain to stumble upon the Dropkick Murphys playing a frantic set in the Golf. The audience went totally berserk at the punky sounds of the Murphys even though it was still hot and sweaty, but I couldn't stop for long as I was already heaving back to the Alpha for my fix of Muse.

Muse's two albums give me very mixed feelings. Some of the songs are pure masterworks: "Muscle Museum", "Showbiz", "Bliss"... On the other hand, some of the songs on the album have this feeling of 'not-belonging-on-there' and that makes their albums very unbalanced. However, I heard some good stories about their live-performance so I had high expectations. And I wasn't misled. Muse gave by far the best performance of the day; vocalist Matthew Bellamy sounded more fragile than ever and the sound mixing was perfect. As far as it is possible to translate emotions into airwaves, Muse does it. Does it good.

Even though it's hard to surpass the outstanding performance of Muse, UK's finest act The Prodigy have built up quite a reputation and should be able to give us the climax of the day. However, with about 40,000 spectators, they totally fucked it up. Granted, the technical error halfway the first song wasn't really _their_ fault. But giving the people a little bit of entertainment for the following 20 minutes it took to fix the problem is not too much to ask, is it? And when the performance finally went on, it was almost a complete waste of time. The sound was HORRIBLE, with the vocals and some drum computer sounds all you could hear. guitars/bass were completely lost somewhere, and if that wasn't bad enough, the routinely way The Prodigy worked through the set didn't create any bond between band and crowd. No, making funny faces and trying to look evil doesn't do the trick. And not playing some of the real classics ("No Good", "Out Of Space", "Fire") was unforgivable for me, especially since they owed it to the crowd to play a little bit longer to make up for the technical problems. No sirree, The Prodigy sucked hard tonight. And so the first day of the Lowlands festival ended.


Saturday
Due to interviewing obligations, I missed out on most of the early-morning bands as 16 Down, De-Phazz and even the Delinquent Habits, but I was in time to catch Yat-Kha in the Foxtrot tent. This Siberian outfit was the weirdest band of the festival, creating a mix between Chinese folk, Tibetan folk and guitar rock (technically called Tuvan music). Especially the interaction between Tibetan style and guitar-style was intriguing, but it was also interesting to see the weird instrument the vocalist was playing which is actually called yat-kha. If you like weird folk stuff, don't miss out on this band or try to get your hands on one of their albums...

Next in the Alpha were System Of A Down ("we are NOT nu-metal!"). These US-Armenians have only recently released their second album Toxicity and have become one of the bands within the nu-scene that has the most fanatic following. Understandable, as their music has more heart, soul _and_ insanity in it than Korn, Limp Bizkit and the Deftones combined. Even though their performance at the Alpha-stage was not all-that (long gaps between songs, cliché conversations with the audience and the mistake of playing too many new songs that nobody really knew), they surely showed their capability of handling instruments and recreating the atmosphere of the albums. Hopefully, they will be touring Europe soon to give us a better show - which should not be a problem, once the fans have dug into the new songs. Weirdly enough, the Lowlands organisation was stupid enough to program System Of A Down at almost the same time as Fear Factory, so when I arrived at the Dommelsch stage their set was already half-through. Fear Factory, as always, played a solid set of songs. A bit on the safe side, except for some of their new songs from the Digimortal album, their performance was routine - never surprising, never disappointing. Closing song "Self Bias Resistor" once more showed the reputation this band has gained over the year.



Today was also the day of the 'surprise act'. Speculations about which band this could be were wild, but mostly came down to Rammstein/Live/Red Hot Chilli Peppers/K-Otic. Thankfully, Mojo didn't push their star-act (ahem) K-Otic through our throats and I’m even more thankful they kept those annoying German idiots that call themselves musicians at home as well. Even though the Red Hot Chilli Peppers would have been the top, I was very pleased to find out that Live indeed was the surprise act of the festival. Their performance was no surprise though, as Live has been around for quite some time and has a good reputation about giving solid performances. Today was no exception: a rundown of all their masterpieces ("Selling The Drama", "I Alone", "Lightning Crashes", "Rattlesnake") but also new material ("Deep Enough") made their set not just a very enjoyable one, but also the best of the day. Making the mistake of going to 3 Doors Down right after Live was not a good choice, because it became even more apparent what a boring band they actually are. They were pretty smart by playing "Kryptonite" as their second-last song, because that song seemed to be the sole reason for most people to hang around. It was pretty interesting to see: as soon as they finished "Kryptonite", the crowd started their exodus, even though the set hadn't ended yet.

Missing out on both Kosheen and Anouk to get some food, I finally ended up near the Alpha for the headliner of today, Placebo. I know this band has a great following but I had never (consciously) heard any of their songs, so I was curious how it would turn out. Only 25 minutes into their set, I was dying to get the hell away. What people see in this band, I do not know - granted, the music is pretty decent although not groundbreaking. But the vocals - my god, I have never heard such a whiney vocalist in my life. I can stand a lot, but almost half an hour of Brian Moloko's nagging was enough to make me flee the terrain and find refuge in the Bravo tent where St. Paul and Code Red provided the harsh techno sounds I needed to forget my dreadful experience.


Sunday
Today started off with a much better temperature, and some clouds as well. Even though that probably meant rain (as it always rains on the Lowlands-sunday), everybody was relieved not to be boiling in their tents for a minute. I started the day by strolling over to Die Anarchistische Abend Underhaltung. I've seen D.A.A.U. a couple of times before, but never fully appreciated them. Perhaps I am getting older, but today D.A.A.U. really captured my attention and I sat through their entire set. Describing their music is very tough; perhaps 'neo-classic' or 'bluesjazzfunk' would come a bit close to put into words their anarchistic sense of music. More than on their albums they practiced the cello and violins, giving the performance a very staccato feeling. Since D.A.A.U. seems to be programmed every Lowlands, I will definitely go see them again next time.

Stone Temple Pilots played half an hour later in the Alpha. I am more a Soundgarden/Alice In Chains person, and now I realize it is a shame that this band is mentioned in once sentence with bands like those. Stone Temple Pilots to me is nothing more than background music. It isn't annoying - far from. But it is not exciting either, just meaningless. After sitting there for 40 minutes and still not having the idea I had actually _heard_ a song, I decided to go check on Tanzwut. Which was a good thing to do: these Rammstein-clones (I really got the impression they played Rammstein songs) had one thing to set them apart from their big example: bagpipes. Which made the songs sound ludicrous. Instead of industrial rock, at times Tanzwut sounded more like German lederhosen-musik and that was definitely highly entertaining! The award for the biggest laugh therefore goes to Tanzwut, and I can encourage any festival to book these guys. Then, while chilling out at the Higher Grounds, I had a clear view and listen to Michael Franti & Spearhead. Even though I'm not a big fan of R&B/hiphop, this old-school style displayed by aforementioned artists was no less than excellent. Mixing R&B, hiphop, funk and soul together in a freeform style, it made for the freakiest music of the festival that was very enjoyable for anyone with an open mind and a predisposition towards virtuosity. Cool stuff!



I strolled back towards Alpha to catch another big name that I had no clear memory of: Eels. I knew that I had heard some of their stuff and found it too slow and too boring to give it a further listen to. But due to a lack of any other good artists playing at that timeslot, I decided to go for it anyway and entered the sweaty tent - by now the sun had started shining again. As soon as Mr E started the first song, I knew I had to revise my opinion of Eels. Their set was a lot more dynamic and rock-oriented than the songs on album, and thus it sound more like pop-rock than emo-pop. I thoroughly enjoyed their set, including classics as "Novocain For The Soul", "Beautiful Freak", "Daisies Of The Galaxy" and "It's A Motherfucker". The audience responded mixed to the set, as the diehard fans probably didn't like this rockier version of Eels, but the rest of the people probably feeling just as much pleasantly surprised as I did. It was the best performance of the Sunday, that was for sure!



Back at the campsite, it started to get cloudy and windy so I packed up all my stuff to be sure and started walking back to the car to get rid of my bags, thus missing out on Ash and a part of Pulp. By the time I got back to the festival terrain it rained so hard that everybody was either hiding in one of the big festival tents (which were overcrowded because of that) or they had risked the way back to their own tents. I decided to go back to the campsite as well, and finally found a radio so I could listen to the tones of Manu Chao, the headliner for the Sunday. Even though I didn't see him perform, judging by his happy & feel-good Latin music I could imagine he made the people in the Alpha-tent forget all about rain and mud and give them their last portion of swing before the DJs were going to take over and finish the festival off with their portion of techno, d&b, alternative and dance-music.

(Review: Xander Hoose, Pics: Yvonne Boonaerts)