Barcelona's Independent Review Website

Sonar 2008
2008-06-20 Fira de Gran Via Oh Sonar! What do you mean? With your insane advertising campaigns and your weekend of sheer electric hedonism, where do you fit into an otherwise orderly life? Well it doesn’t. It’s one of the most intense festivals around, combining the very best of electro and generally excellent music with multimedia art and all sorts of indescribable weirdness crammed into three days and dotted across our magical city like a rain shower of confetti spilling out about forty thousand brightly dressed natty little raver kids wandering the streets morning to night from the mountain to the sea…(pause for breath). Sonar is the probably the most authentic festival experience in Barcelona, rivalled only in Spain, perhaps, by the super fuerte Benicassim. This year it was the Friday night that really stood out. Justice, Errol Alkan, Diplo, Yelle, Boys Noize, and even original party band Madness. A great thing about this festival is that contrary to certain people’s assumptions you don’t have to spend your whole time there watching DJs or people simply twiddling nobs. In the course of the evening we will experience the horrific try-hardedness of Jamie Cullum’s Jazz electro combo, (BC vs JC feat. Darren Emerson) which seemed to have all the ingredients necessary except a good bass line or decent drum beat, the true majestic crazed energy of Barcelona’s Pinker Tones, a New York disco funk side project of Antony (and the Johnsons) Heggarty, French hoppiness from Yelle and the Camden mad boys themselves. But first up was a little bit of knob twiddling in the form of local boy, Suite on Clouds. I always feel a little sorry for chill out DJs and when a guy describes himself on MySpace as “electronica/down-tempo” you know he’s going to have a tough time a time at an event like Sonar. Beautiful sounds: yes, occasional highpoints: yes, but good to dance to? Nope, sorry, this is definitely bedroom music. You probably can’t say much that’s negative about Madness live, it would be a trade descriptions violation. They do exactly what they are supposed to, they sing happy songs, dance about on stage, play their hits, still look pretty good despite forming thirty two years ago and generally make the audience feel brilliant about life (though other chemical factors may also have been of assistance there.) Even though there set was surprisingly short, a mere forty minutes by my watch, who cares when they finish up with a medley of “Our House”, “My Girl”, and “It Must Be Love”. At which point local favourites The Pinker Tones had already taken to the stage on SonarPub injecting some much needed energy into the djing experience. With great visuals, the combination of decks, synths, voices, live drum machines and crunching guitars they set the place alight with pure addictive electro-pop. Definitely a highlight of the night and about as exciting as live music gets. A similar claim could be laid at Justice’s door. They may not quite have the live energy or presence or power of the Pinker Tones but they do have a giant neon cross and after all, no one quite knows how to get a party started right the way they do. Semi-regulars to Barcelona, having seen them a few times, the performance this year could not quite match some of their more memorable ones, last year’s Ed Banger showcase with half their stablemates making their presence felt as backing dancers particularly stands out. And this is one problem with Sonar Night, in that as soon as a band make it big enough they are put in the main arena and you instantly lose some of the magic of the fantastic outdoor SonarPub stage. I wonder how many of tonight’s performances would have been that extra bit more incredible had the whole thing been outdoors? A band that didn’t have any trouble reproducing an all cylinder performance were The NYC dance outfit Hercules and Love Affair. A funked up electro disco sound envisioned with twin vocalists an intense live feel and tons of New York attitude. On record the sound is given even more depth and originality with the help of Anthony Hegarty’s distinctive vocals but live the performance is surely improved by the high energy stage strutting of exquisite transvestite Nomi. It’s especially nice to see a band before you’re aware of the hype around them and Hercules and Love Affair were a definite surprise, whether the feel and energy of the music could quite be matched on records remains to be seen, but to see the crowd reacting so strongly to such powerful and interesting music will be a defining memory of this year’s Sonar. It turned out that Errol wasn’t well so was going to be replaced by “best kept secret” Kawasaki. I imagine some present were disappointed when this unknown DJ turned out to be a pseudonym for everyone’s favourite 2manyDJs, though the giant roar from the crowd did little to show it. Their excellent, eclectic and eccentric djing style is plenty documented on this site alone yet somehow it didn’t quite kick off, so after about an hour of feeling tired on my feet and swaying sufficiently to keep my friends happy, I went home to bed.