THE ELECTRONIC UNITED NATIONS
Aug 1, 2007 12:00 PM, Samina Virani
Read the Remix live review of Barcelona’s Sónar and electronic-music festival. Musical innovation—from performances to panels—were the themes of the festival.
Kode9's dubstep, Shitdisco and Klaxon's new-rave, Wolf Eyes' digital noise. Sounds like some sort of elaborate musical anthology. As a matter of fact, it's SÓnar.
SÓnar — the International Festival of Advanced Music and Multimedia — held in one of the globe's most avant-garde quarters, Barcelona, took place on June 14, 15 and 16. At the ripe age of 14, the festival's official agenda was as flirtatious as ever, fancying just about every musical genre ever conceived. Dancing around the jazzed-up hip-hop of Hocus Pocus, the eight-handed turntablism of C2C, the disco kitsch sound of Acce, as well as the emphatic minimalism of M_nus, SÓnar 2007 was hardly committed to one type of music but rather to a celebration of the diverse palette of music that constitutes innovations in sound and noise.
However, nothing prepared the festival goers for duo FM3's presentation of the Buddha Machine. Well known in China, this unusual sonic artifact based on a low-tech device is programmed with various Buddhist mantras looped in its memory. At SÓnar, FM3 cleverly replaced these prayers with ambient sequences, reconfiguring the purpose of the machine and introducing an entirely new landscape to sound production — eye opening and genius.
Other true standouts included the highly anticipated exclusive live instrumental show from the Beastie Boys on Friday, accompanied by the minimalist techno project Narod Niki, as well as Saturday's Devo performance. After a 17-year hiatus from Europe, this new-wave group from Ohio — iconic for converging pop-rock music with electronic-based sounds — delivered a sensational and riveting performance.
As the festival's tradition dictates, much of SÓnar's emphatic symphony numbers, known as Off-SÓnar events, took place throughout the city, orchestrated mainly by Berlin's entourage of electronic-music labels. This year's showstopper was Sebo K. In a series of downright jaw-dropping sets — a magic carpet ride of cleverly intertwined beats racing down rabbit holes and seasoned with precisely crafted lyrical interludes — the German producer and DJ raised the roof right off the Hotel Diagonal Saturday at Mobilee Record's industry rooftop party before stirring up more wizardry at Resident Advisor's first SÓnar event held on the same night at Be Cool.
Kompakt Records delivered a highly distinguished run of performances as well, first at Friday's Nitsa Club bash, where Tobias Thomas' epic run of memorable loops had festival goers chanting for days, and then on the beachfront Sunday, where maestro Michael Mayer took over the decks to play at one of the only beach parties to survive this year's police crackdown on sandbox soirees. Unfortunate victims of Barcelona's new law enforcements were M_nus and Get Physical, whose deliberately far-off beach-party locations didn't seem to deter officials from shutting them down.
Police aside, Get Physical's usual razzmatazz party held at The Loft on Thursday was catapulted to soaring new heights this year as one-to-watch producer extraordinaire Samim Winiger (formerly part of Fuckpony) delivered a champagne-bubbly refreshing live set enveloped with wit, spunk and jovial intonations. With SÓnar's official logo being a yellow smiley face, reminiscent of acid house and suggestive of new-rave, Winiger's set and his latest track, ‘Heater,’ a spin off of a jolly marching-band number, was indeed the quintessential mantra for SÓnar 2007.
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