Now if I’m gonna be honest, when I looked at the Sonar line-up on the web-site, I didn’t know much about most of the acts on there. I checked the Off-Sonar list and I was pretty much in the same boat. Fuck it, I thought, I wasn’t really going for the music. I had heard Sonar was the crack and that was what I was after. Street sessions, rooftop parties, and the Sonar events themselves – bring it on.
For those of you who don't know Sonar, it's not like your typical music festival where you get your tent and your wellies and off you go down the country, no, Sonar is in the city centre of Barcelona. It goes from Thursday to Sunday, each day split into two events in two locations. Sonar by Day & Sonar by Night.
Sonar by Day (3pm – 10pm each day) is held on the grounds of the Barcelona Museum of Modern Art, which is pretty much a stones throw from the main thorough fair in Barcelona, La Rambla. Sonar by Night (11pm – 6am each day) everyone takes hired buses out to this industrial park outside the city centre, to a venue called AV. Botanica.
Punters can buy a weekend pass for a €150 which entitles you to go to every Sonar event, or you have the option of paying into each event individually, we decided to choose the latter. Every other year at Sonar, supposedly, it had been the cheaper option to just pay into each event of your choice, but, sadly, this year it was quite different. Obviously the chuns working on Sonar have grown wise to this over the years and this year, have jacked up the prices of the event tickets – Sonar by Day for just one day was €45 in and Sonar by Night for just one night was €60 in. So, as you can see, €150 for the whole weekend is not a bad shout but that’s if you want to go to Sonar at all. ‘What? Not go to Sonar?’ I hear you ask.
Another option when going to Barca during Sonar is not to go to Sonar at all, don’t bother with a ticket. There are parties being thrown all over Barca throughout the whole weekend, all of which are scheduled on the Off-Sonar Listings. Your only man for all information regarding this is the Resident Adviser web-site, saved our lives over there. Labels and Record Stores from all over Europe, pretty much, set up shop in the pubs, clubs and restaurants across the Barcelona.
This was our first Sonar, all four of us, and we had high hopes, such high hopes that we went 2 days earlier to chill out and get to know the city. We booked an apartment in Barcaloneta, a district right by the beach, not too far away from La Ramblas, about 15 minute walk. Myself and Darran got such joy out of the novelty of walking around the streets at 1am in a pair of shorts and t-shirt. We were loving it.
One of my favourite things about Barcalona was the on-street service; I took advantage of it pretty much every night I was there. Everywhere you went there were dudes on the street selling ice cold cans of beer. Amazing, I thought, this is a service that needs to come to Dublin sharpish. You could just mosey around the street, taking it all in and there was no, ‘where is the offo’ billshit. No, it was on every street corner with a smile, well, . . . . . . . . a smile is a bit much, I don’t think I saw one of those lads smile even once.
We literally lived right on the beach, we could see the sea from our balcony, it was bliss. If anyone is heading for Barca, you gotta situate yourself in Barcaloneta for this simple reason. Every morning, we’d get up, grab a bite to eat and head down to the beach. The sun would be belting down, lads selling not only ice cold brews but also cocktails, messages, even coconuts on the beach – I don’t know what the Spanish for coconut is but I think it sounds something like the terrorists from Team America. Dider Didier dider di! Unreal buzz, just swimming in the sea and looking back at a city right there in front of you, it was heaven.
Thursday morning, the first day of the festival – we all planned on meeting up with our mate Laura and a few others who were staying else where and head to the first Sonar by Day in the Barcelona Museum of Modern Art. There were maybe one or two acts I wanted to see but the main thing I was dying to see was this amazing set up, I’d been hearing so much about. I’m expecting this huge enclosure placed in the middle of the city, something kind of resembling Trinity I suppose, but, sadly, I could not have been more wrong. It more resembled a small area of UCD, a concrete slab. It was a serious case of 2 pounds of sugar in a one pound bag, the place was fuckin jammers. Nicolas Jaar was rammed to capacity so missed that. Fuck it, I thought, I’ll go get myself a gargle and maybe something else, if you know what I mean, and just relax into it, we’ll find a nice area in which to hang and we’ll get whooped for the day. . . . . . .ten minutes. . . . . . . twenty minutes went by. . . . . .I’m still not feeling this place. I just wanna be able to sit and chill somewhere that the music isn’t in my face. I know, it’s a music festival but I love those areas where you can just pan out and get your shit together, mentally, there was none of that. The gargle, as well, was extortionate, I shit you not, €4 for a plastic glass of beer, not a pint, a small glass of beer. I swear to God, I had to buy about 4 at a time to do me for a half hour, I was necking each one in two swigs. I eventually loose everyone I was with, just to get away for a bit. I bump into Darran, who has obviously done the same and we checkout the buzz outside the venue, just so we can breathe for a bit. I’m not going to lie; we never entered Sonar by Day again. We just chilled outside getting served up ice cold sarvasas by our friends on the street. We could hear the tunes grand and we had our area where we could chill the fuck out – Perfect. After that experience, I wasn’t in a rush back to Sonar by Day that was for sure.
Another thing that I noticed, something wasn’t happening, the street parties, I had heard there was an abundance of them during this thing, where were all the street parties? I had heard from so many people that the city comes alive for Sonar, that the place is one big gigantic party whilst the festival was on. I have to say, it was anything but, it was actually quite calm. If you had come to Barcelona just for a holiday and not known that Sonar was on, you would probably leave the city unaware that it was ever taking place. That is no joke. If it wasn’t for resident adviser, I swear to God, you would have struggled to find anything.
After the whole Sonar by Day experience, I was very reluctant to pay out €65 for a Sonar by Night ticket; my money was running out fast. How could this of been? I had plenty of cash, what was the craic? I suddenly then realised what it was. Barcelona is a very fuckin expensive city; it is a notch above Dublin my opinion. Okay, there are some things that are blatantly cheaper like smokes and food to cook in the apartment, but that was about it.
Saturday night, myself and Darren got our tickets to Sonar by Night. I made a decision, I wasn’t going to go to Barcelona and not go to Sonar by Night, there was plenty to see on the line up – Kalkbrenner, Janel Monae, Underworld, all great buzz. Aaron and Tara were going to some club in West Barcelona to checkout DJ Harvey, an act I’m dying to see when he comes to Dublin because the lads said it was sweet. Anyway, we arrive on this bus and it is exactly as I imagined it to be, a gigantic industrial park, like, we might as well have been in Ballymount. We stroll in, a huge lobby with all these stalls left and right, not eateries or shops or stalls selling anything, they were advertising stalls, for phones and cars, the type of thing you’d see at a big business expo or something. We stroll on and into the arena and, fuck me, is this place massive? It is fucking huge. It is four gargantuan rooms that were so colossal, I can’t even tell you. It was like 4 RDS’s in a row, no shit, you could fit about ten planes in this fucker.
We head into checkout the end of Janel Monae who I saw in the Body & Soul at last year’s EP, cool as fuck that bird, and then on into Underworld which was the fucking crack, the same stage show I’ve seen about 5 times but still whopper, deadly light show with an incredible sound system, great way to kick off the proceedings.
After we stroll around in anticipation of Kalkbrenner, we head in and out of each room buying drinks and what we notice is a striking lack of atmosphere in the place, people were wandering around as if they we browsing in a supermarket or something, there was absolutely no buzz in the place. Everyone looked very . . . . . . Bored. It was just thumping techno in every room and that was it. Now, I like techno as much as the next person and I know it’s an electronic music festival but if you have 4 gigantic arenas and you are banging out thudding techno in everyone of them, well, you are being a little unimaginative.
We bump into two mates from home, Ivan & Mark, and in we go to checkout Kalkbrenner. I couldn’t wait to see Paul Kalkbrenner, ever since seeing that Berlin Calling movie, I have been mad into his stuff and I was well interested to see him live. Obviously, the schedule had been put behind so we all had the pleasure of seeing the hellish sounds of Mary Anne Hobbs before he came on. This bird was playing tunes that I can only describe as music of the demons, the music of someone being gang raped, it was vile. It was so disturbing that me and Darran said to Ivan and Mark, ‘Fuck this, Lads, we are out of here’ and off we went on our travels again.
Myself and Darran found ourselves somewhere comfortable where we could hear Kalkbrenner from a distance, bought ourselves 4 more of those disgracefully small beers, found out that they didn’t sell any cigarettes in the whole place so I scabbed a few off some people and we chill out on these picnic benches. This is where we began to philosophise about what this festival was and what it was about.
We didn’t know whether it was just this Sonar or whether it was every Sonar. We both agreed that there was an air of emperor’s new cloths about the place, loads of people enjoying themselves but they aren’t really. We felt there are two types of people in Dublin, people who go to Sonar and the people who don’t go to Sonar. The people who go to Sonar have told the people who don’t go to Sonar how amazing and how deadly and how unreal Sonar is, every year, so much so that when the people who don’t go to Sonar eventually get up the courage to go, they end up having a great old time, when in fact, they are actually really not. I was completely under whelmed by the whole experience, nothing was blowing my bollix off. Barcelona itself is amazing, the sun, the sea, the city itself was quality. Sonar, I’m sorry, no thanks, the one description for me was boring, I was bored shitless.
On the final day, we did the whole tourist thing and it was savage, one of the high points of the trip, we checked out the Nou Camp and all the Gaudi art around the city and it was brilliant. Gaudi Park was unbelievable.
All in all, I loved Barcelona but as for Sonar, it was a huge let down. We had disgust Sonar or Glasto this year and we decided Sonar – next year, we’ll be heading to Glasto, I can tell you. That is 2 festivals this summer and both have been disappointing – Come on
