EarPIPE

Sonar Line Up Announced!

Thursday, February 25th, 2010 | Event Preview | No Comments

So the bulk of the line-up has been announced and it’s looking pretty hot. We already knew The Chems, LCD Soundsystem and Air were on the bill. So who else is on? Well as expected Richie Hawtin is taking his Plastikman world tour to Sonar, we’re very excited about that! The musical genius that is Matthew Herbet will be in attendance too and Sonar firm favourite 2ManyDJs are also returning. Booka Shade will be bringing their live show to the delight of many and from the hip hop side of things Kid Koala is booked. I’ve only seen him once but his show was one of the most creative things I’ve seen in hip hop.  Talking of hip hop, on of the originators The Sugar Hill Gang are also set to make an appearance!

One of the themes for this year will be a focus on the multi faceted British music scene which will showcase everything from the large acts like The Chems and Hot Chip though to the underground with the likes of Joy Orbison, Speech Debelle, Sandwell District and Fuck Buttons. No doubt more will be announced in the coming weeks and we’ll be sure to keep you posted.

In the mean time you better buy your tickets now:
UK residents should buy tickets from TICKETWEB

Everyone else in the world buy your tickets from Tickaticket

For the full line up so far visit www.sonar.es

Tags: 2ManyDJS, Air, Bookashade, Fuck Buttons, Hot Chip, Joy Orbison, Kid koala, LCD Soundsystem, Matthew Herbert, Plastikman, Sandwell District, Sonar, Speech Debelle, Sugarhill Gang, The Chemical Brothers, The Sugarhill Gang

The Early Bird Catches the Sonar Worm | Festival Preview

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 | Event Preview | No Comments

We’re barely out of January but thoughts are already turning to summer festival activities. If you were militantly organised you would have booked your Glasto ticket back in October. Crazy, I know. But the early bird catches the worm and all that. Another early bird special on the go is EarPipe favourite Sonar festival. Situated in and around the city of Barcelona over 3 days and 2 nights, Sonar combines forward thinking music and the multimedia arts to create a diverse and fun filled festival to the backdrop of a beautiful city. Ok the night time events in an exhibition hall on an industrial estate do lack that modernist Gaudi finesse you might expect from Barcelona, but the climate and music definitely make up for that. Also, during the day you’re based in the city so you’re free to explore all over as opposed to being penned in some camp site for the whole weekend. That pretty much sums up the whole weekend for Sonar – you get all the delights of a music festival, yet you have the freedom to explore Barcelona itself, and none of this camping bollocks, just festivals, parties and when you need it, beds, showers and running water. › Continue reading

Tags: Air, Barcelona, Grace Jones, Hawtin, Jeff Mills, LCD Soundsystem, Marcel Dettmann, Orbital, Richie Hawtin, Sonar

EarPipe Has an Even Hazier Look Back at the Music Through 2008

Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 | Music, News | 1 Comment

I normally struggle to think what tunes have been and gone in the last month, so trying to remember what I was listening to back in January is a mountainous mission in itself, which is probably why I’m going to write this avoiding any specifics and will talk around the subject pretending I know what I’m talking about like any good politician would do. But from what I can recollect “minimal” became housier (or maybe I became housier?), Dubstep collided with Techno and Disco has undergone a massive revival

So lets start with the shift towards the housier sounds. We noticed a lot of DJs ditching the repetitive and bland “minimal” sounds that were starting to stagnate and instead nudging more towards the house end of the spectrum. This meant a bit more funk and soul embedded into tracks, more vocals and jazzier samples. It may sound like we’re harking back to the funky house days circa 2000-02, but this was slightly different, it was more an amalgamation of what came out of the “minimal-tech” sounds which dominated ’05-’07 with older house music sensibilities as seen from the Chicago deep house days. A perfect example of this is probably My My, their remix of Djuma Soundsytem’s Les Dijnns ’s typifies where the sound was during 2007 whilst their latest release Everybody’s Talkin’ is a glimpse into the house sound doing the rounds at the moment. The same goes for Josh Wink’s Stay Out All Night and Matthew Styles We Said Nothing, both distinctly Chi-town influenced numbers which bebop’s to a fun and funked up skipping rhythm. In a similar vein who could forget Johnny D who’s had a fantastic year. His track Orbitallife was causing raucous everywhere through the summer not to mention all his other releases.

But then it wasn’t all fun funked up house, this year saw a lot of dub style house and techno music with heavy basslines at a relaxed pace. Tracks like Trus’me’s W.A.R Dub particularly stood out as did a lot of the output from Gedde’s new label MurMur which had artists like Bearweasel pumping out deep and hypnotic house. One of the best tracks of the year for me was the highly elusive Wax1001. There was no artist or label, just this white label containing the rawest house track ever. A simple track with clunky beats, classic hi hat patterns and a dark raw bassline made Wax1001 show how less is definitely more.

› Continue reading

Tags: Afefe Iku, Ame, Appleblim, Bearwesel, Disco, Disco Bloodbath, Dixon, Djuma Soundsystem, Dubfire, Dubstep, Fabric, Geddes, Henrik Schwarz, Hercules and Love Affair, Horse Meat Disco, house, Innervisions, Italo Boyz, James Murphy, Johnny D, Josh Wink, Laurent Garnier, LCD Soundsystem, Lindstrom, Metro Area, Minimal, Mulletover, Murmur, My My, Mymy, Osborne, Pat Mahoney, Prins Thomas, Quiet Village, Radioslave, Ricardo Villalobos, Secretsundaze, Shackleton, SiS, Skull Disco, Smalltown Supersound, Stimming, techno, Trus'me, Villalobos, Wax1001