The Sonar Report: EarPIPE’s Review Part 1

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 | Event Reviews, Events

It seems like only yesterday since EarPipe was scoffing its all meals in one croissant whilst basking in the Barcelona sunshine listening to an obscure foreign hip hop band after being massively on it for two days already. You’ve probably guessed that such a sequence of words can only mean we’re talking about the advanced music and multimedia arts festival Sonar and that this is the first part of EarPipe’s Sonar Report for 2008. We’ll be covering, well attempting to cover what we saw at the Sonar events and a bit of the other stuff that happened off Sonar too. All this is of course subject to memory!

So to kick off, proceedings began with EarPipe’s visit to Sonar by Day held in the CCCB MACBA complex. The same format from previous years was kept with the usual outdoor Sonar Village courtyard area, the marquee Sonar Dome, the two indoor arenas and our personal favourite the Red Bull Music Lounge, five great arenas where you can catch the obscure, the weird and the wonderful.

On the first day the Sonar Village were treated to DJ2D2’s Spanish trip hop stylings in between live performances. He keeps the crowd nicely ticking over as they sip mojitos in the sunshine. The main treat however was Little Dragon who have been slowly creeping to popularity on the alternative scene. Their recent single “Twice” has been getting plays from the likes of Giles Peterson and the like. Their sound is a combination of electronica jazz with hints of dub, hip hop and funk, think Bjork but with a bit more funk. The result is some beautiful songs over interesting beats and melodies. The laidback jazzy melodies were perfect in the Barcelona sun and definitely complimented the numerous rounds of mojitos.

Departing briefly from the laidbackness of outside, earPipe took a trip inside to check out the Red Bull Music Lounge. Of course the lounge must only be entered via the claustrophobic metal lifts to experience that “doors opening onto at basement rave in blade” feel. Doing just that the doors roll back and Patrice Baumel is breaking out the techno to a packed room dancing as if it were DC-10. I’ve always loved the atmosphere in the Red Bull Lounge. When the right DJ comes on you get a real house party vibe and Patrice was doing that to the fullest extent, playing electronic house to techno with intriguing melodies laced in.

A short trip downstairs sees earPipe stumble across Pan Sonic an experimental electronica/techno group. Their music was chin stroking and abstract of the highest order. Whilst I’m not usually one for this type of music, Pan Sonic were intriguing with their body reverberating sounds. It was literally a wall of noise, but a carefully calculated chaotic one. Understandably these guys are all about the sounds they can create using custom built synths and drum modules to tickle every end of the audio spectrum that computers just can’t reach. Their show consisted of the group on stage with their equipment and an oscillation visualisation to show you how gut wrenchingly raw their sound was. Interesting but definitely not for the faint hearted or more so those with loose bowels. This clip may go some way to explaining what I’m on about.

Thursday night left us with a few options. There were various parties going on all over the city. The choices were the GetPhysical pool party at Liquid outside of the city, the Club4 special at City Hall with Beyer, Carola and Matthew Dear or the This is Hardcore night at Razzmatazz with Holden and Felix da Mousemat. With too much choice came much deliberation, but not fancying the long trips or queues, the group plumped for the Soma party at La Terrazza. On the bill were the Soma family from Slam to Silicone Soul and Funk D’Void. La Terrazza is a beautiful open air club set in the hills near the Olympic village. On arrival Silicone Soul had just finished and Funk D’Void had taken to the reins with his new deep and melodic sound as heard on his recent Sci Fi Hi Fi. Funk D’Void laid down the spaced out house sounds which slowly built up to Slam’s set, who instantly tore down the new build with Radioslave’s Grindhouse Tool. Slam kept to a steady pace with the right sort of techno for the fairly glam crowd of La Terrazza, keeping everyone interested and moving. A great party to kick the weekend off.

Part 2 shall be along shortly.

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