| #661 |
|
2003 |
Perilous 661 Sonar was crazy. Three days and three nights of electronic mayhem set in the idyllic Barcelona scorching under 35 degree summer heat and almost eternally long daytime sun. The daytime events at Sonar occur in the MACBA and CCCB, two contemporary art galleries side by side in central Barcelona. By situating the event in these galleries the daytime events are immediately lent an atmosphere that far surpasses most other music festivals. The main stage is in the courtyard between the two buildings whilst there are four other stages in and around the buildings. In the CCCB itself, there were multimedia installation pieces by Francisco Lopez and other artists as well as a mini record and magazine fair, a small cinema showing short films and video clips, and a large exhibition of ten years of Sonar. The vibe for the daytime events reminded me a lot of Vibes in its heyday (circa 1995), except, being Spain no one wears hats (despite the scorching sun) and hence a refreshing lack of stupid cowboy hats. Unfortunately, also being Spain, the mullet is ever present on both boys and girls. The daytime capacity would be pushing 20,000 although it is not until the second day that it really fills up. There is so much on each day that there are inevitable clashes and on the second and third day some stages were closed off when they reached capacity. On the first day most time was spent working out where everything was and then checking the Anticon showcase with Themselves, Sole and Sage Francis – all of whom have considerably tightened their sets since their visits to Australia (2001, 2002). The evening special event on the first night is a performance by Matthew Herbert’s new Big Band project in a nearby concert hall. Unfortunately heading to this means missing Pole and various others, but, Herbert’s show was incredible. Moving well beyond his usual live sampling the big band project was an excellent example of how to merge electronics with traditional band formats properly , and how purposely putting limitations on your work as an artist can make for far more interesting work than ‘limitless freeform’. Herbert’s sampling and realtime processing (his usual sampling rig plus two Kaos pads) was subtle but ever present and the vocals from Arto Lindsay, Dani Scicilliano and Jamie Lidell sublime. The 40-odd big band members were extremely tight and the show was one of the best and inspiring things I have seen since Einsturzende Neubauten way back in 1991. Following Herbert we head out to a press event and we catch a few of the specially prepared 30 minute DJ sets from Jeff Mills (old school electro and funk), Laurent Garnier (late 80s Madchester), Francois K (banging techno) and radio legend John Peel (unmixed). The production for the press event was huge and the venue is filled with about 3000 people with video projections on all walls. Day two highlights included Prefuse73 (who played a much livelier set than in Montreal) and the Meteorites, the new signing to Lidell and Vogel’s Rise Robots Rise label. The Meteorites have been getting a bit of word-of-mouth hype with several other journalists I ran into were telling me to go and check their set. What they ended up being like was the Beta Band doing dancehall. It was very English and started with a rap about the milkman, and the rhymes continued in a Monty Python-esque vein over some killer dancehall-style riddims. I had been warned about the scale of the night time shows but on getting out to the venue it was still a shock. Imagine Utopia multiplied by twenty and it is still underestimating the size. The venue for night time activities is a huge conference centre on the outskirts of Barcelona. The main act on this first night was Bjork accompanied by the Icelandic String Octet and Matmos, followed by an all star lineup of techno and other Djs and live acts. But it seemed everyone was there to catch Bjork. The room she was playing in housed about 40,000 with another two side rooms/stages with space for probably another 30,000. It was absolutely vast but the sound was remarkably crystal clear and the huge video screens suspended both along the sides of the hall and above the stage screened some completely stunning organic mutant spermatozoa/jellyfish video work. Bjork was just a dot on a far away stage but the combined effect of sound and video made her visibility or otherwise fortunately irrelevant. Following Bjork there were DJ sets from Ritchie Hawtin, Mark Bell, LCD Soundsystem before the heat and the long queue for buses back to central Barcelona reached a point where sleep beckoned. The final day of Sonar and the other events on the city at the same time, Versus and Wrong will be covered in the next instalment of Perilous. Yellow Peril (www.snarl.org)  Goto
Snarl Texts Index Pages
|