Hi there,
Last week something special happened in Spain! In Barcelona the Sonar
Advance Music Meeting was held, a festival that is concerned with
Electronic Muisc in all its forms. There were three days and nights of
conferences, chill out DJ's, club nights, live performances and much much
more.
Thursday 15th
After a good night sleep (we arrived on wednesday, and explored the spanish
cerveza bars that night) Sonar began at noon -and without us- as scheduled.
I arrived at 2PM, receiving concerned looks about my appearance (probably a
result from the night before), but I managed to catch the last of Aloof
Proof playing live, nice ambient welcome! There were nice installations,
with video images responding to the amount of people inside, and a nice
installation from Dutch artist Gerard van der Kaap, and from spain by
Miquel Jorda and Marcel.li Antunez. In the chillout various DJ's played
ambient stuff, and finally, Scanner did a live show at the main hall,
keeping it interesting with some crazy telephone noises, used as drum
sounds. The people were really nice, and seemed very interested (but not
dancing). After a quick dinner with accompanying language problems and
cervezas, I managed the miss the bus to that night's dance event, held in
the hills at the border of Barcelone. So I can't tell you about Orbital,
Fangoria, John Aquaviva and DJ Gloria, but the beer was nice (and it was
called Damm, a damm fine bottle of beer)
Friday!
The second day, and already I got a lot of new Spanish friends, who didn't
seem to be bothered by my lack of Spanish and their lack of English
(Intelligent conversations!). I arrived at 16.00 today, missing two
interviews but feeling good, as I had spent the afternoon in various
museums and monuments in Barcelona. I caught a glimpse of John Aquaviva,
playing disco in the chill-out room, and heard David Toop was cancelled,
unfortunately. Live were playing Feel Action from Spain (Techno!) and later
on Scorn, who impressed people with their tattoos mainly. One of them got a
bit mad at his keyboard and for a while he seemed to be anxious to throw it
into the audience (which he didn't eventually). Then it was my turn at the
decks in the chill-out room. After bouncing the needle of the first record
I played (which was ofcourse, not my own clumsy approach, but the unstable
installation :) ) I got some cerveza and decided to stick to the excellent
Pioneer CD players to play some music on. A good feeling, I noticed people
dancing with their small children, a further proof that all ages can be
enjoying electronic music! Overall there were people of many generations
coming to this festival, which I found very refreshing to see!
Later on I caught the bus (after running for it and having to finish half a
liter of beer in 2 minutes, a combination which later proved to be very
effective), which was full ofcourse. I sat on Scanner's lap and off we
went! After an interesting ride, were I met some new interesting people, we
arrived at the tent! A nice place, quite big, and we were just in time to
watch the Psychic Warriors of Gaya playing live! I found it a very chaotic,
but nice set (quite long) and enjoyed myself on the dance floor. A few
hours and cerveza later, I met the R&S crew, just arriving. After greeting
Katrien ('Godverdomme Stefaan, jij hier') and Renaat ('Hoe ist jonge') we
all went for some beer (again) and then we watched Dreadzone performing. I
won't go into details, but we came up with a new name for them afterwards,
called 'Dreadful', and our English friends mentioned 'Deadzone'. No further
comment. After this, DJ Gilbert played hardcore jungle with live toasting,
which the audience did not really catch. We got outside to answer to
nature's call, and looked for the bus! We found it, but the driver was
sleeping. After ten minutes of discussion whether to wake him up or not, a
group of very LOUD spanish people appeared, and finally the driver was
convinced to drive us back. Time for zzzzz.....
Saturday 17th
I was in time for breakfast today, getting strange looks from the waiter,
(as I arrived at 10.58, breakfast closed at 11.00), and joined a couple of
people from Denmark, who had done without sleep for about 36 hours, and we
talked about transporter beams to Denmark. Today there was an interesting
concert, which had a ISDN live connection with Amsterdam. In Barcelona was
Atau Tanaka playing with sensors, attached to his hands, and the people in
Amsterdam were responding to it. It went really well, although there was a
delay with receiving everything, but Atau said they made this delay part of
their music. The concert was nice, but afterwards they had a guy in
Amsterdam who wanted to say something.....it was Luc Sala, the
self-proclaimed internet guru of Holland, and those of you who don't know
about him....keep it that way.
Anyway, the party that night was great, ofcourse everybody was there trying
to get rid off last day's hangover, and with a little liquid help, they
succeeded. Performing on stage tonight was Biosphere, who's sound seems to
be improving every time, but not the impact. He performed after a real
building set from local hero DJ Toni Rox. Before that we could witness an
interesting electro set by performing artist Madelman from Spain, someone
to watch out for! We finished with Kenny Larking playing pure energy for
two hours, and we discovered that Kenny and Cerveza are words that go very
well together.
This tiny review only covered a small piece of a very intersting festival,
full of open minded people and with the right atmosphere. I'll be there
next year.......
Stefan
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