In the world of ambient music, Harold Budd is a big name.

Whether this is also a big deal, of course, is open to debate.

Ambient is an acquired taste and, let's face it, even if you're a convert you have to be in the mood for music that takes pleasure in doing away with all the good bits.

Rhythm, tunes, choruses? Get rid. Even I, the proud owner of no fewer than three Brian Eno CDs, can go a good month without feeling the need for a mood piece with the word "airport" in the title.

When I do, it's usually after a grim day at work, about five minutes after my cocoa and five seconds before lights out.

But then? Well, I admit I'm a sucker for it.

Throw all the terms at me - minimalist, discrete, neo-classical - and, if I wasn't drifting off to nirvana, I'd lap them up with a helping of modern art.

Quiet and hypnotic, good ambient isn't drugs music. It's a good drug.

The problem, of course, is trying to recreate this live. The concert at The Dome was, by all accounts, a Significant Event.

Budd, ambient's "founding father" and a collaborator with Eno, David Sylvian and Cocteau Twins, was playing his last concert.

And this, a celebration of his work, featured a line-up that promised much.

The Cocteau's Robin Guthrie was there on guitar. The Balanescu Quartet (who once memorably put Kraftwerk to strings) opened. Jah Wobble, formerly of the mighty PIL, was on bass.

If there was perhaps just a little to much reverence about the place, there was no shortage of talent.

And yet the expected magical, hypnotic experience never materialised. From the off it became clear that, for this music more than most, the setting is vital.

And if the ideal would be to listen to Budd's delicate piano doodlings in surround sound on a mountain top under the stars, in The Dome, on a Saturday night with a restless audience intent on regular beer breaks, the effect was altogether less satisfying.

Surprisingly, things weren't helped by technical problems.

The amplification of the Balanescu Quartet's opening set was muffled and, from about midway, a buzz started from one of the many electronic gizmos that was never rectified.

If it was The Strokes it wouldn't have mattered; in hush-hush ambient world this was equivalent to a wildebeest exercising on a wooden floor in the flat above.

There were high points - Theo Travis provided Budd with beautiful accompaniment on flute and saxophone (although again, the sound quality was far from great) while John Foxx, with a bit of help from some microphone technology, briefly turned the Dome into a futurist cathedral with his vocal pyrotechnics.

There was also a ten-minute solo gong performance and a glorified jam session at the end, when the musicians came on at intervals to create a wall of sound.

Now to me it most resembled that bit on Jools Holland when all the guests play whatever they want at the same time and try to drown each other out.

But the guy sitting next to me - obviously better at getting in the zone - obviously thought this was the stuff of staggering genius. And the thing is, if I had been in a dark room and it was playing through one of those new super audio CD players, I might well have agreed.