01/07/2008 - Sonar festival review

About a month ago me and two friends made the rather spontanious decision to book some cheap Ryanair tickets to Barcelona. This was after hearing and reading a lot of good things about the Sonar festival, which would now be organised for the fifteenth time. Now, being sober again and back on Belgian ground, I can only share the enthusiasm.

Sonar Festival consists out of two parts: Sonar by Day, located in the city center, and Sonar by Night in the outskirts of the city. The former is more a platform for all kinds of installations, exhibitions and activities by multimedia artists, while the latter is probably better known, due to the fact that it's the actual festival where all the real big acts play. Due to a number of reasons (late arrival time, limited financial reasons and our nature as ravers which implies catching up sleep during daytime) we only bought tickets for Sonar by Night. A first look at the line up immediately shows us the main difference between Sonar and most of the Belgian festivals: there were almost no traditional rock bands, the festival is really dedicated to innovative electronic music. You can imagine we were surprised that the first thing we heard was Madness, a British Ska band that was really big during the 80's (you probably remember their hit One Step Beyond). The band wasn't bad, but Peter, one of my friends I joined, isn't the biggest Ska fan to say the least so we made way to the lovely Sonar Lab stage. This was definately my favorite stage as it was open air (and full moon), and there were autoscooters which made us immediately feel at home. We entered when Mary Ann Hobbes was mixing (maybe I should say putting her hands in the air after putting on another song without actually mixing). Still, Mary Ann has the loveliest radio voice I know and she pushes really good music (keep your eyes open for the Evangeline album she compiled, which will come out on Planet Mu one of these days). Next to that we went to check out Diplo, known for his versatile selection and mixing big hits with obscure third world beats. He played in Sonar Club, a really big room and I think that was one of the reasons he started his set with rather hard (and in my opinion uninspired) techno, fawlessly mixed though. After a while he mixed in a Nirvana song and my friend Bram suddenly became a Diplo fan. I'm pretty sure Diplo played more M.I.A. and likewise songs further in his set but we couldn't wait for that as Shackleton started his set in the Sonar Lab. I heard most of the music he released before so I thought I knew what to expect: abstract, ultra deep beats that don't fit in in any category, with some hypnotising spoken words over it. His music really worked on that time and place, actually a lot of people danced on his music, something I don't expect to see too fast in Belgium. After Shackleton it was time for Flying Lotus to do his thing. He actually was one of the main reasons we went to the festival. Did he live up to the expectations? Yes he did, and how! I read in an interview that his live sets are, in contrast to his more downtempo oriented records, meant to dance on. A simple distinction more artists should pay attention to. I especially remember his own productions and the Burial and Martyn tunes, really lovely in that setting! The jungle part at the end of his set was an excellent climax. Besides Flylo has a really infectious energy behind the decks, which in my opinion looks more authentic than Mary Annes'. I was a bit overwhelmed when he suddenly stood next to me taking a piss in the mens' room. Time flew by and it soon was time for the DMZ godfather Mala to drop the newest dubstep bombs. My respect for this guy is really big because in my opinion he succeeds, as nobody else in the dubstep scene, in finding the ideal balance between musicality and simple dancefloor fun. Big set. After Mala a Portugese-Angolan group I never heard of pleasantly surprised me. They were called Buraka Som Sistema and were described as 'the missing link between funk, hardcore and ghetto-tech', I would say: think about an African version of a The Bug, Flow Dan and Warrior Queen live set. I really didn't feel any need to check Richie Hawtin with his Minus gang doing their Contakt project, but that might had something to do with the enjoyable company or our newly made English friends. Theo Parrish was next on the bill, a name I heard a lot but honestly I had no idea what to expect from him. His set full with great funk, soul and broken beats was a nice change in atmosphere without bringing us out of our dancing mood. I don't really remember what the Japanese dj Kawazaki played after him, except for the fact that Flylo joined him for a back 2 back session untill 7 AM when security decided the party was over for that day. Very satisfied we returned to our hostel to catch some sleep before returning for the second night which would be as good as the first.

The second day started for us with the Antipop Consortium concert. I allways thought they were 3 guys, but there were actually 5 people on the stage. They started with some great instrumental beats resulting out of the conversations of their drumcomputers. Later on Beans, High Priest and Sayid took their mic's and spoiled us with some classics (like Ghostlawns and Ping Pong) as well as a selection of songs of their album which 'll come out later this year. After that the French Miss Kittin took over, the amount of people in front of the stage doubled, in contrast to the quality of the music. We still had some good fun with her lyrics like 'Miss Kittin is high', repeated 5 times and followed by 'Miss Kittin is horny'. Next time we want to hear 'Miss Kittin is hungry' or 'Miss Kitt has to pee' or something like that! Anyway, the little patriot in ourselves suddenly became alive so we decided to leave the room for what it was and go check out Soulwax. I don't like everything they do but one simply can't deny their accomplishments in contemporary dance music. The part of their set I saw started rather predictable, but then suddenly: BOOM. They did a live version of some classic Belgian rave tunes like 'James Brown is dead' and 'Anasthesia' (if I remember correctly). At that point I certanly wasn't the only one going mental. Normally I prefer intimate parties with a few hundred partying people but the catching effect of standing in between probably 10.000 ravers still can't be underestimated. In the mean time we hooked up with our English friends and cruised around a bit, waiting for the next highlight of the festival. That would become project X 102: a coöperation between Jeff Mills and Mad Mike, the two founding fathers of the legendary Underground Resistance techno label. During this live set they reïnterpreted their 1992 record: 'X 102 discovers the rings of Saturn'. This set made me think of a techno version of the best moments of Progression Sessions, the atmospheric jungle mixes by LTJ Bukem. If I could chose one set of the festival to witness once again it would definately be this one: so dreamy and spooky, the houer really flew away. Besides the spectacular visuals, making use of images of Saturn made by the unmanned Cassini-Huygens space mission, really added something to the experience. After that, Warp act Chris Clark stepped up, but I have to admit my head was still in the clouds so can't really comment on his set. By then the night was allready in its final chapter, and who else than Ricarde Villalobos could be the most appropriate protagonist on that point in time. Due to obvious reasons he could only play for two houers, so his selection actually wasn't that deep, nonetheless I really enjoyed the music this energetic, funny and most likely very nice guy brought us.
It was a great end for a festival with great people and so much good music. Luckily we still had 4 days left in Barcelona to sleep, buy out the fruit markets, do some beachparties, visit recordshops, make silly jokes (yes you, Bram) and so much more. Too bad the vacation had to end with Ryanair, don't like them, the wankers never let me take care of the flying part.