SONAR

I am kind of delayed on getting this entry to press, as I'm still kind of recovering from the trip to Barcelona for the Sonar music festival last weekend. It was sooo amazing, but I have to say that the whole experience was a little tainted by sleep deprivation. I guess that's part of the trip with festivals such as those. At least my lack of sleep put me in a similarly altered state to the thousands of other revelers who had to pay lots of money for pills and powders to facilitate their hallucinations ;-)

I thought I'd save some money on a hostel by taking the overnight train to Barcelona. I paid a little more for my ticket to get a place in a sleeper cabin with 6 beds, thinking I would arrive refreshed instead of sore and grumpy. Thanks to a combination of drunk high school students and a bad door to our cabin that kept opening and closing, I was kept up much of the night. I probably got 4 hours of sleep during the 9 hour trip. AAARRRGGGHH!

This really nice guy from Chicago was in the bunk across from me, and we decided to head to the cafeteria car right after we took off. Soon after we arrived, we ran into his female friend from Vancouver. They said they had been running into each other for the past several days in hostels and trains, but I could have sworn they were related. They were like blond-haired blue-eyed Germanic twins.

On my way back to the cabin, I somehow managed to get my right arm lodged behind this automatic door between the train cars. The automatic part never really worked, and it was the only automatic door in the many cars that I traversed, so kind of stupid anyway. All the doors were hard to open, so when I got to the automatic one, I was in a rhythm of yanking them hard to make sure it opened on the first try. Well, this one didn't work on the first try, so I yanked again. At this point, the motor kicked in with my arm still attached to the handle and pinned my elbow against the wall. I was panicked, but knew not to yank to hard or I would hurt myself. Right then, a group of high school students drinking beer between cars realized that I was trapped and started laughing hysterically. While not immune to humor in the situation, frankly I was still freaking on how to get my arm out. I finally wrestled myself free and returned to the cabin, but I was sure I'd have messed up my shoulder somehow (big groan from everyone who had to listen to me bitch about my injured shoulder for 2 years a few years back). The good news is that I didn't... don't know how, but I won't complain. Just a little wounded pride :(

The train got in to Barcelona at around 8 a.m., but the Chicago guy and I missed the stop and had to catch a commuter train back after we finally realized what had happened. SO, I got to my hostel kind of dazed and confused. Crawled back into bed in the smelly-boy hostel room with 6 bunks and got a couple of more hours of sleep before the heat and humidity woke me up around noon.

I got myself ready and I set out to find the Sonar daytime events for Friday. I have to say that the directions to get there were sketchy at best, and I hadn't had time to print them out, but I remembered the metro stop, so I thought I'd be fine. WRONG. I literally spent all day lost and confused and angry and frustrated. The only bright spot was that I came across some pretty areas of the city along the way. The entire city of Barcelona is like a gallery of beauty, so you just sort of stumble upon things as you're wandering around.

I realized on my first metro trip that I was passing Antonio Gaudi's Sagrada Familia cathedral, so I dropped by to see how the construction was coming along. The church has been under construction since 1882, and the latest estimates say it could be completed by 2020. Here are a few pics I snapped before continuing on my lost trajectory.

Perpetual Construction - Passion Facade of Sagrada Familia

More Passion

Passion Facade - Detail

In the Shadows... The Nativity Facade

Nativity Facade - Detail

I remembered that the online map to Sonar had the Placa Espanya metro stop at the top, so I went there next. This is right near Montjuic and also has some really beautiful views.

Fountain in Placa Espanya

Palau Nacional

I asked for directions from these security guards at one of the exhibition halls in the Montjuic area, and he told me how to get to the festival. I caught a bus and continued the lost trail until finally giving up and going to an internet place to print out the stupid maps. Reading the maps clued me in to the fact that the daytime events weren't even held in the location to which I was headed, so I had to start over from scratch. Finally, 6 hours after I set out (or something), and after another hour of being lost near the Ramblas area, I found the Sonar day event!!!! There were only a couple of hours left, but I was there.

The first song I heard was the Severed Heads song "Saturday Night" that I'd modeled to in a fashion show for designer Duran Knutzen 20 years earlier in Lincoln, Nebraska. You can listen to the album here. I felt like I was having a flashback or something. I only caught one other DJ act that day (I think they were called Rare Trax, very good), and then I went to meet up with my friend Sam from SF who is living in Barcelona.

It was nice to connect with a fellow San Franciscan and see how her life in Spain was coming along. While we were hanging out with her roommates at her place, one of them said that if I wanted to catch the nighttime events, I had better go soon, because it was a logistical nightmare. So I was off again, in search of Sonar Night. The festival had free buses running from Colon Plaza, but the lines were out of control. I tried to catch a cab, but got tired of competing with 50 other people. Finally, I took the metro back to Plaza Espanya and got in line for a cab there. Shared the cab with this really sweet couple and had some good Spanish conversation time on our way to the festival.

When I arrived, the sheer magnitude of the nighttime events really struck me. I just googled to check the numbers, and Yahoo Spain said that 81,500 people attended the festival. Now that's over three days of daytime and nighttime events, but it's still HUGE. I had no idea. There were four different performance venues in the nighttime space, each one worthy of a pretty good-sized concert. Two were outdoors and two were indoors. One of the outdoor areas had a carnival-type atmosphere with bumper cars, and crepe and beverage vendors, as well as picnic tables to hang out, eat, or perhaps climb up on to dance if the urge hit.

There were many acts each night. You can see the entire list here (click the dates at the top for each day). I had a mini-list of the folks I really wanted to catch, and I think the only ones I missed were Fat Freddy's Drop and Hot Chip. There were so many other acts that I didn't get to see, though, that I'm sure I missed some others who were really good. One of the down sides to the festival was that I was always having to decide between two or more amazing artists. I suppose it's better than being bored with too few.

I arrived late in the set for Nightmares on Wax at Sonar Pub, but got to hear my favorite song of theirs - "Les Nuits." I have a video of it, but the lens on my @#$%&^! camera didn't open all the way, so I won't torture you with an even worse quality video than the normal internet video fare. Just know that it was AMAZING :)

Then, I hopped over to see Chic at Sonar Club. They may be getting up there in years (um, so am I, hehe), but they still have the funk. I loved how the acts at Sonar were so varied. Who would have thought of Chic at an electronica festival? I'm going to embed videos from the event in this page. Just a warning that the sound quality isn't great, but considering the volume level, I'm amazed that the sound came out at all.

Chic - "Good Times"

The next set I saw was DJ Krush, who I've never really liked much on disc, but sounded great live.

DJ Krush Takes the Crowd on a Trip

I caught a little bit of Jeff Mills' set, but his flavor of techno is a little heavy for my taste. I know he's a techno GOD, but just not quite my style. I thought of some of my friends who are really into hard core techno often at this festival. You guys would have been in HEAVEN.

Tiga played next at Sonar Lab, the outdoor carnival-like venue. I have listened to his discs on multiple occasions and never really dug the music, but his live set was out of this world. He had the crowd on top of the tables for the entire two hours that he played. I was too busy running back and forth trying to catch everyone to really enjoy his show, but caught a few really great spells.

Bad Video - Good Tiga Music

Around the same time at Sonar Park, Griffi and DJ2D2 from Spain were cutting up a really nice hip hop DJ set. I'm not usually into hip hop, but these guys were a little more experimental. That's one thing I loved about Sonar, that all the acts just let loose and really twisted the music (and the sound system... and our ears) to the limit.

One of the last acts that night was Satoshi Tomeii. I had never heard of him before this, but I knew that if he was the last act in Sonar Club (the largest of the four spaces), that he must be good. Wow, am I glad I was able to see some of his DJ set. The visuals by Todd Graft were a perfect accompaniment to the tribal house beats. OK, this video sucks, but I'm posting it anyway, because I loved this song so much (even if you can't hear it over the distortion from the gadzillion megawatt speakers). If you like deep house, LISTEN TO SATOSHI TOMIIE!!! And, if you have any idea who does this song please TELL ME!

Satoshi Tomiie Pushing the Speakers to the Limit

I have no idea how I was able to stay lucid for Sasha's set that started at 4:45 a.m., but I made it like halfway through. It was so beautiful to see all the people in the crowd in the outdoor space of Sonar Pub grooving together to his trance-y techno at dawn.

Elation During a Lull in Sasha's Set

I finally decided to leave at probably 6 a.m. and exited the performance space to the sunrise. I encountered a new wave of logistical chaos, as the hundreds of people streaming out had no idea how do get home. I finally wandered along with the flock toward more recognizable civilization and caught a bus that I recognized from one of my earlier lost adventures which took me to the metro to my hostel. I probably finally got to bed at 8:30 or 9:00 in the morning.

Chaos at Sunrise with the Rotor on the Hill

The next day, I skipped the Sonar Day activities with the hope of taking it easy, relaxing, recovering. Although the recovery attempt was in vain, I was able to have a pretty relaxed day, but continued to subsist on another night (or day, I should say) of 4 hours of sleep. Even my evening nap was more like a lucid comatose state for an hour in the smelly hostel room, ick. In the afternoon, I had coffee at a nice cafe on Passeig de Gracia and got to check out some of the beautiful modernist architecture.

Pretty Building - Passeig de Gracia

Casa Lleó Morera by Domènech i Montaner

Casa Amatller by Josep Puig i Cadafalch

Casa Batlló by Antoni Gaudí

After, the nap-like occurrence, I was determined to arrive at Sonar Night earlier this time. Alas, after grabbing something to eat and the obligatory logistical nightmare that brought me to the same taxi pickup spot in Placa Espanya, I arrived at about the same time again... around 12:45 a.m. I was just in time to see the end of Goldfrapp's set. It looked like they put on a pretty good show... wish I could have caught the whole thing.

Goldfrapp - "Strict Machine"

Right after Goldfrapp, Spanish DJ Angel Molina played a DJ set. I am so happy that I live here!!! He's playing again this coming weekend at an after-pride event in Madrid, so I hope to hear some more of his crazy good beats.

Angel Molina

For the first time in my life, I brought earplugs with me for the second night of Sonar. The sound system was sooo good, especially in Sonar Club, that you literally could not escape the intensity of sound. They had walls of speakers hanging from the ceiling at perfect intervals to keep the sound consistent throughout the space. I'm not 21 anymore (not even 31, darnit), and hope to continue hearing good music into... well, later in life.

SO, the point is I put in the earplugs during Angel's set. These really young and drunk Spanish guys next to me decided that I was a DJ, and kept patting me on the back and pointing me out to other people, saying that I spun records. At least I think that's what they were saying (the story of my life in Spain, I'm telling you). Finally, I sort of wandered away from them, as it was too loud for me to really explain my plebeian status, and I was becoming tired of being pointed out and being bumped around in a sort of brotherly acknowledgement fashion.

Around this time, The Digable Planets were performing live in Sonar Park, so I stopped by for one song. Something about the energy there just wasn't catching me, so I went back to Sonar Club where the other bands I'd seen had played just as The MFA was starting their set. I have never heard of these guys, but their live show was awesome and really kind of out there. I googled them and it looks like they've mostly done remixes for other groups. Hope they come out with more of their own stuff soon. I am sorry these videos are so jerky and not the best quality. Some day (soon!) I'll learn to hold the camera still, but until then, I hope you get the idea.

The MFA

After dropping by the Saturday Night Fever interactive dance floor put on by some corporate mega-giant...



...I went back to Sonar Club for Miss Kittin's DJ set. Miss Kitten is probably best known for her vocal work with The Hacker. At Sonar, she spun records, but also added her vocals over the top at times, which made for a really cool effect. Check it out!

Miss Kitten in All Her Beauty

I ended up staying in Sonar Club most the night, the acts were sooo good. Next up was Modoselektor. German boys who really know how to conjure up a crunchy beat. Don't think I could listen to this as background music, but it was pretty interesting with the amazing acoustics at Sonar.

Modoselektor

After Modoselektor, I went to Sonar Pub to see Ryan Elliot from the U.S. I had never heard of him, but one of my friends had mentioned him as someone that was supposed to be really good. When I arrived, he was doing something really strange with two songs that really didn't seem like they should go together, but he somehow made it work.

Ryan Elliot and an Unlikely Mix

I was planning on going home earlier the second night, because the sleep deprivation was really starting to tax me, but the two French guys who shared the cab with me earlier in the night had informed me that it was essential that I stay to see the finale, when two of the best DJ's in the world (according to them) - Richie Hawtin & Ricardo Villalobos were playing together. In anticipation of the spectacle, I killed time at the bumper cars area, where the DJ was playing the best upbeat techno music. I captured the video below in the hopes of catching enough of the lyrics to find out what this song was, and... it worked!!! It's "Tribulations" by LCD Soundsystem. Don't know how I missed that before, as I have a few of their songs already. Anyway, here's the vid...

LCD Soundsystem - "Tribulations"

So at 4:45 a.m. or something, Ricardo Villalobos and Richie Hawtin finally came on. The small part of their set that I heard didn't really move me, although it was probably a conglomeration of factors that contributed to the un-moved state. I stayed for a little longer, and then started the long lost journey back to the hostel. This time, I was able to find the special Sonar bus stop right near the event, but the lines were sooo long. Every time a new bus pulled up, it was full instantly. The sun was rising again, and everyone was tired and grumpy. Finally, I got on a bus and was dropped off at the base of the Ramblas. At least I got a cool picture with the strange sculpture in the plaza at dawn :) I'm not really sure which plaza (Colon?), but I can assure you it is in Barcelona.

Some Plaza in Barcelona at Dawn

I had such a good time at the festival, but I will definitely have to go back to explore more of Barcelona. I spent much of my time in a decked out airline hangar (Sonar) or in a hostel bed trying to sleep. But, at least the music lives on in my head and in my iTunes.