Sonar Festival Review from a Newcomer

Our favourites on May 20, 2010 1:27 pm

In words, Sonar took my expectations chucked them up into the heavens, wrapped them up in clouds and doves and just made and met them so perfectly amazingly.

First time at Sonar Festival in Barcelona and this is a slice of my Sonar experience. Read on to find out how I encountered this attractive electronic music festival.

Sonar is officially the “International Festival of Advanced Music and Multimedia Art”. Running since 1994, two completely different festival experiences in one, Sonar by day and Sonar by night.
Sonar by day was nice and relaxed, crowds lounged on the turf, the air was friendly, plenty of shade to escape to, comfy to move around and an adequate amount of toilets to cope with the Estrella beer bladder.

Thursday jerked off with UKs dance music ambassador Pete Tong who had everyone swaying on the turf in the village with drink in air. Sonar kicked off (for me) with a band full of personal nostalgia, Caribou bou bou oh! The tent was packed, but I found a spot underneath an armpit and on top of a suitcase and got a nice cheeky glimpse, I left a happy bunny as did the rest of the tent.

Fast forward to Friday I remember Delorean playing at around 9. At this point I was dancing in a hole but fully appreciating their set, and the journey from Sonar by day to Sonar by night was about to begin. Ah the Sonar bus was full of beautiful, open and (sweaty) people, it was comfy, only 2 Euros and it was definitely the place to be, a lot easier to do and I would recommend just following the crowd of Sonar zombies.

So at this point things went from gentle to mental; Sonar by night was in a massive magnificent shed. Fully surreal, this utopia you could only ever find in a warehouse. It was an exciting place to come into, we twitched all the way to the stage that floods of happy heads were all en route for – crazed moths to plasma screens and lasers. LCD sound system and Air were my highlights, French duo Air were particularly classy, 2 many DJs and Hot Chip broke up the never ending hard bass that thumped away inside my head for more than a few sleeps and let me sing along to something for a while.

(Thick Glaswegian accent) “Wen morr tooooooon!” from Scottish labels Numbers and Lucky Me, who brought the goodies with Hudson Mohawke and Jackmaster.
Joy Orbison, Roska, American Men and Booka shade also echoed from an assortment of pubs and labs and made for a heart attack from pure bliss.

Honestly I missed Slew, but they are definitely worth checking out. I’ve seen Kid Koala play once and combined with Wolfmother, I feel like they would have beautiful musical babies.
Chemical Brothers and their intro was a scene, it seemed to last for an hour…maybe more, and ‘Hey boy Hey girl’ went down really. Really. Well, and at one point I could actually see the entire rooms’ skeletons.

The one thing that stood out for me at Sonar was the filthy British style of it all. It was fabric, it was great, somehow in the middle of Barcelona in this massive shed, I was surrounded by accents hailing from Sheffield, East London and Manchester, Dizzie Rascal made me feel strangely patriotic. No pretentious fuss or muss, just simply and honestly good. Just a Rascal followed by dubstep queen Caspa tipped me over the edge and the rest is a magnificent blur, Sonar (especially by night) completely dwarfed anything I’d ever seen before, I would recommend it to my neighbours, my friends, strangers in the street and everyone in general.