skkatter’s completely non-definitive Sonar review with 80% more namedropping. (you can really taste the namedropping!)
This is a pretty long read (2700+ words!), so I dunno, go grab a cup of coffee first or something first.
Wednesday
‘Twas a bright and sunny Wednesday morning when I was heading out to the airport to fly over to Barcelona which annoyed me
greatly as I always want the weather in Dublin to be terrible when I’m flying to sunnier places, so I can gloat about it to e
verybody who wasn’t on holidays when I come home. It’s the Irish way! My flight was at 12:30pm and as per usual all the other
Sonar attendants on the flight were busy getting the drink in at the bar before the plane took off, you crazy alcoholics! (it’
s the Irish way!)
Anyway, skipping ahead a few hours and we’d successfully negotiated the way to La Rambla (or Los Ramblos as we all incorrec
tly kept calling it, hoho!) where I checked into my much-fancier-than-the-place-I-stayed-in-two-years-ago hotel and then heade
d up to the Centre de Cultura Contempor
ck up my VIP ticket. Now before you start making insulting comments about my un-VIPness let me just explain the whole VIP accr
editation thing:
The Sonar PRO accreditation thingie (a quick explanation)
The Sonar PRO (their capitalisation, not mine) accreditation is exactly the same as a normal full “three days and two nigh
ts” ticket except that it also grants you access to the VIP area at Sonar Day and Sonar Night. It also means you enter the day
and night events through a different door (where the queues are a lot smaller), you are invited to a Sonar PRO only party on
Thursday night and you get a free Sonar bag full of crap (the bag itself is really cool though). This PRO ticket costs around
20 quid extra than a normal ticket but the bag you get costs 20 quid to buy anyway so you’re getting a good deal there. But th
e main thing that not many people seem to get is that you don’t actually need to be a company/press/DJ/whatever to get a pro p
ass. You just need to make up a company name and fill in a form that’s available on the Sonar website. You don’t even need a V
AT number or anything! My made up company was called “skkatter LTD”, though it was a toss up between that and “Timestretch Ind
ustries”. Getting the pro pass meant that I got to order drinks in the VIP sections of the day and night events which had real
ly small queues! Woo woo! That’s pretty much the only reason to bother getting one though.
Back to the Wednesday stuff. Sonar doesn’t officially start until Thursday but there was still a lot of stuff on before it
so I met up with gonzo reporter Richard Brophy and we headed down to the port area for the Red Bull Academy Barbeque party whi
ch turned out to be an excellent move because not only did they have a large amount of really good food but they also had a *f
ree bar* (these are scared words) which we royally abused in true Irish style. Special thanks to Arveene for inviting us, it w
as a really nice setting beside a marina full of yachts, and it was also my first chance to see those new Technics CD decks. Unfortunately t
he music was a bit trip-hoppy (and definitely not minimal enough for Richard who kept saying “Man, this isn’t minimal enough f
or me!) so as soon as we discovered that the free bar had been drunk dry we decided to head back into the city centre for some
random pub-going-to. After another two bars we ended up in Moog where some local residents were playing dull house records, b
ut I got talking to two really cute English girls so I stayed until 4am or so and then it was home to bed.
Thursday (The Sonar By Day Event)
The first day of Sonar proper, luckily enough for me my hotel was about five minutes walk from the CCCB venue so I headed
up nice and early and arrived there at 4pm, just in time to check out the Get Physical Records showcase in the SonarLab room.
Or so I thought! The SonarLab venue is a converted church just outside the CCCB that holds, oh, I’d say 500 people or so. Unfo
rtunately by the time I got there this room was completely full, and there was also a queue of 300 people outside trying to ge
t in. I waited about for about ten minutes to see if the queue was moving, but it wasn’t, so I wandered off to the SonarDome v
enue instead. This was the first of many ridiculous organisational mistakes that I noticed. The Get Physical showcase was easi
ly the most popular thing at the Thursday event, they should have put it on in the biggest room (ie SonarVillage, the big outd
oor area in the middle of the CCCB). A bit of wandering around ensued, nothing else really grabbed me music wise but the gener
al party/sunny/drunken atmosphere made up for it. The same overcrowding problem also happened with Herbert who was put on in a
nother ridiculously small room, I wasn’t into the mood to fight my way through a few hundred drunken sweaty revellers so I mis
sed his show. Later on in the evening I ended up having dinner with Funk D’Void, Dub Kult and Andy the tall guy from Groove Ar
mada! Namedrop-tastic! The portions were really small though.
Thursday night
Later on that night I headed down to the Sonar accreditation party thing at Razzmatazz where Diplo, Cut Chemist, DJ T and
some other heads were playing. I caught a bit of Cut Chemist (bleugh) and DJ T (pretty good) but the place was too packed and too big more my tastes so I left and walked about five minutes to another club where the Basscelona party was on and a load o
f techno and electro was being played! There I saw such acts as The Wee DJs, Medooza and Bionix in a great little club where
the bar staff were giving me free shots, they also had the coolest bouncer in the world, he was giving us directions and revie
ws of local clubs!
Richard Brophy had gone into the Loft (which is right beside Razzmatazz) to see Adult play live which he said was great but
once again far too crowded. He used his press pass to jump a queue apparently, the cheeky lad! I stayed at the electro party
until about 6am, Brophy tried to get me to go to some other party at a pool (which turned out to be over) but I was exhausted
by this stage so I grabbed a taxi home, emptied the four kilos of accumulated flyers out of my swish Sonar bag and then went t
o bed.
Friday, Sonar By Day
Fr-Fr-Fr-Friday! After buying a plastic container full of fresh fruit from a market right beside my hotel I headed up to t
he CCCB again to do some more wandering and mental complaining about the music. The best thing I heard was this guy DJing in t
he SonarLab room, I’m pretty sure he was Sety from the Circus Company showcase, but I was getting a bit freaked out by the amo
unt of people around (Sin City voice: “I have this condition you see”) so I headed off to the beach (Playa de la Mar Bella to
be exact) for the Bpitch beach party which was where I heard some of the best music of the weekend! The perfect combination of
minimal techno, a beach and some great weather, and guys selling cans of beer for a Euro each out of coolers they were carryi
ng around (I’m thinking of trying this in Dublin some night, jailarity will probably ensue). After some laying around on the s
and shenanigans we went to a nearby restaurant for some pretty decent seafood and one of our party noticed that Neneh Cherry w
as eating at the same restaurant as us! He went up and said hello, but didn’t get a photo because she was with her boyfriend a
nd he seemed a bit annoyed at having his dinner interrupted.
Friday night
Not much on the Friday night Sonar schedule really grabbed my attention (who hasn’t seen Mills and Garnier before?) so we
skipped that and instead went to a club called Nitsa where the Bpitch Vs Kompakt party was on and arrived just in time for the
start of Ellen Allien’s set which was deadly! Nitsa is about the size of the Olympia and the place was rammed (just like prac
tically every club in Barcelona during Sonar) and the only beer they were selling was Budweiser! What the hell!? The guy on af
ter Elllen wasn’t so great (I think it was Ferenc) so we left and went to another club called City Hall where Damien Lazarus w
as on the wheels that are made of steel, I didn’t like the stuff he was playing at all though. Lots of City Rockers type clash
y house. Also the only beer being sold here was Budweiser also (what the hell!?) and it was six Euro a flipping bottle!!! A gr
oup called Sweet Light were up next playing a liveset, I didn’t think so much of them either but Brophy loved it. It was off t
o bed for me at 7am, but not before buying some of those one Euro cans of beer off some guy on the street on the way home, woo
woo!
Saturday, Sonar By Day
Some more wandering around the CCCB building on Saturday but this time with some added recording buying from the record fa
re which was pretty good because there were quite a few decent labels there and all the records were a lot cheaper than back i
n Ireland. The best bits I picked up were a few new Treibstoff releases. Music wise the best thing I heard during the day was
a DJ set by Alex Attias who was part of the Compost Records showcase (I’d wanted to see Ben Mono live but missed him). Nothing
else there really grabbed my fancy so I went off down to the beach again for “The Beach Factor” party which John Selway, Alex
Smoke and some others were playing at. John Selway played some classic italo disco, he was the best of the lot. The beach onc
e again was great, I’d definitely spend a lot more time there if I went back to Sonar again.
Saturday, Sonar By Night
On Saturday evening I met up with French D1 operative Marie and her friend Marina (I’m sure I’ve spelt her name wrong thou
gh) and we decided to share a taxi down. It was just after midnight and there were quite a few taxis at the bottom of La Rambl
a but the first three or so that we went to all demanded 20 Euro for taking us to the Sonar Night venue which was a complete r
ip off as it only cost 8 Euro normally. So Marie and Marina told those taxi drivers to go to hell in Spanish (they’re studying
Spanish you see) and eventually we found an honest taxi driver that just turned on the meter like he’s frikkin’ supposed to a
nd it ended up costing 8 Euro, just like I said it would!
Right, before I review the night thing let me explain something. I hate large crowds of people. I don’t mind if I’m in a small
to medium sized nightclub that’s packed, but once we start heading into the 1000 or more capacity venues I start getting a bi
t freaked out. The Sonar Night events are held in what is probably a converted aircraft hanger which holds a total of about 20
,000 people. So that’s twenty times the fear I’d normally experience when in a 1000 person capacity room (check out the maths
skills!). I was at Sonar before in 2003 and had to leave the first night event I was at after about an hour due to the crowds
and queues but this year wasn’t so bad because of my nifty Sonar accreditation pro pass thing which meant it only took me three minutes to get into the building (as opposed to 20 minutes in 2003).
Once in there we ended up in the SonarPark area where De La Soul were playing. It was a nice change from the constant minimali
sm I’d been hearing up until now (this is actually just a running joke, all weekend long a certain reporter kept saying how ev
erything was either “super minimal” or “not minimal enough”). De La Soul put on a really good show, encouraging the audience m
embers to wave their hands in the air, to go home and listen to hip-hop after the show, to respect hip-hop more etc. Actually
come to think of it there should have been less talk and more actual songs being played.
Later on we went into the main SonarClub for a bit of Miss Kittin’s set but she was pretty disappointing (she’s probably t
he most over hyped DJ around right now in my opinion) so we hung about in the VIP section for most of the rest of the night be
cause there were hardly any queues for the bar and toilets there but also because it was in the same room as the Minus showcas
e so we got to hear Magda, Troy Pierce, Richie Hawtin, Mathew Jonson and Marc Houle while sitting down on the astroturf enjoyi
ng some drinks. The perfect festival experience in my uneducated-about-festivals opinion. Mathew Jonson was probably my favour
ite, I really like his music and hearing Marionette on a huge sound system really sent a shiver (the good kind of shiver) down
my spine.
I nipped out a few times to check out Mia, Luke Vibert, Diplo and Ellen Allien but was scared off by the massive amount of
people out there so pretty much missed most of their stuff. All these acts are definitely more suited to smaller venues, I’d e
specially like to hear Diplo play somewhere small in Dublin. I started to get pretty tired at about 6:30am so I skipped off on
my merry way. Getting home was a bit tricky but I eventually found a bus stop with around a hundred people waiting at it so I
assumed the bus passing would take me back to La Rambla, which it did, score! It was a bit of a squash though.
Sunday, more beach action
Sunday was spent in bed until 5pm and then I headed out and met up with the Basscelona people and headed out to a beach th
at was a bit more far out (far out man!) than usual at Montgat Nord (about 20 minutes out from Barcelona on the train) for the
ir finishing-up-Sonar-with-electro party which was great fun. Pathic, Ruxpin and Funxiun all played some tasty sets and there
was more free food in the form of a barbeque where I got way more than the two sausages I had originally demanded from them. M
y original plans were to stay at the beach for a while and then head back into town for the Haywire party at Moog but the booz
e and company convinced me to stay and I ended up getting the first train home the next morning at 5:10am and then it was back
to my hotel for a few hours sleep before checking out and heading to the airport with half the beach still in my runners.
So at the end of the day I was pretty underwhelmed (yeah, it’s not really a word) by the music at the Sonar by Day, the nig
ht event I was at was good but the venue was too big, and the extra curricular parties in various clubs and on various beaches
around the town seemed to have the best music going. If I ever went back I think I’d skip the official Sonar event altogether
and just concentrate on the parties, I had a much better time this year than back in 2003 because I knew my way around Barcel
ona a bit better this time and because of that handy queue skipping Sonar pro pass, I recommend everybody who wants to go see
everything at Sonar gets one of them!!
Sonar Photos here. Phew, that was a long review, congratulations
on making it to the end!