You couldn't find two more different festivals to share a weekend than V2001 and the Big Chill. While both are so clean, comfortable and family-friendly that they make Glastonbury seem like an endurance test of Survivoresque proportions, their agendas are poles apart.
Brand-saturated V stands or falls on its line-up, but at the Big Chill's compact site the music is ambient in the original sense of the word: it's all around you wherever you wander. There's no rush to see an act because there's not much to see, and you don't have to worry about missing the hits because there aren't any. Neither of these are drawbacks. The Moby-loving dilettante might baulk at the lack of big names, but in dedicated chill-out circles the likes of Austrian trip-hop pioneers Kruder and Dorfmeister, Saturday's headliners, are as good as it gets.
Chill-out being the broadest of churches (one DJ combines Ben E King, Tom Petty and Aphex Twin), not all the music hits the spot. There is a little too much pallid acid-jazz and formless electronica. More often, though, there is the thrill of seeing an act who would be lucky to get a 2pm slot in the JJB sports arena at V assume champion status.
Though Kruder and Dorfmeister's uptempo dubwise DJ set, enlivened by an MC and a portly gentleman busting some Homer Simpson dance moves, stretches the definition of "live", it rouses all but the most languid. Sunday headliners Bent, who have more in common with Orbital than Air, infuse their blissful, charity-shop Balearic with rave spirit.
The horizontal punter is well served by the Sanctuary stage, set against the dramatic backdrop of Lulworth Castle, where singer- songwriter Kirsty Hawkshaw raises goosebumps with an acoustic version of It's a Fine Day. On Sunday night Global Communication's Tom Middleton performs material from the duo's classic ambient debut with the addition of a 25-piece choir, and tears well up. The set epitomises the weekend's unique emotional force - an event where even the most cantankerous cynic can be charmed, moved and enjoy a clean Portaloo. And that is hard to overrate.
