Sonar by Night, Barcelona

  • Published
    Jun 28, 2005
  • Words
    Resident Advisor
  • Share
  • After spending a good 30 minutes attempting to get a cab over to the Sonar by Night location, finally being in the right place at the right time and having to share a cab with 2 other sonar attendees also struggling to make their way, we arrived at the event... On paper Sonar by night looked interesting to say the least, a combination of big name crowd pullers and unique impressive underground talents. The 3 arenas - Sonar Park, Sonar Pub and Sonar Club - set the foundation for the line-ups to be dropped into according groups. Each arena had its own feel / style of artists and each with a different crowd pull. We arrived at around 1am after what was a rather brief and painless walk in off the industrial streets of Barcelona. The Chemical Brothers had just got going and the crowd we're already going nuts. A mixture of old and new made up the first stage of the Chems set. From 'Hey Boy Hey Girl' to their 'Block Rockin Beats' and most notably a huge mix of 'Galvanize' the duo had the enormous arena filling by the minute as people streamed in through every orifice. From there they went on from their own production spinning music from various other artists and gave the arena a much needed great vibe. What helped cement the Chemical Brothers set was the impressive use of visuals. Loads of great video footage sync'd in with the mixing worked very well across the mutliple plasma screens on stage as well as the 4 massive screens hanging around the stadium. From trippy clowns to walking robots and climbing monkeys the impact was on the money. Joris Voorn was up next. There was a 5 minute breather leaving the stage was massively transformed as huge black curtains came down leaving just enough space for Joris Voorn and his setup on the front of for his live set. Joris had 40 minutes to deliver his live musical cargo. There were half a dozen people on stage setting up the equipment and someone was behind the desk testing bits and pieces and then a simple track started banging out. We heard the following entertaining conversation: Punter: "Who's on stage?" Punters Friend: "I think that's the sound guy... doing some tests" A few moments past... Punters Friend: "...that sound guy is really getting into it" ...and then the coin dropped and they realised that 'the sound guy' was indeed a Holland DJ named Joris. He broke straight into his heavy sound and banged out some solid live techno with the great use of half a dozen video cameras strapped around the desk offering a variety of angles an insight into what he was doing with his equipment. As Joris finished, and his equipment briskly removed, the curtains opened to reveal a huge cleared stage with a single massive screen behind the table that seemed to sit in a void of space in the middle of the huge stage. As the crowd waiting for something to happen people started to notice a dark wiry hand popped up from behind the decks... and he jumped out with a huge bassline to a thunderous applause. Jeff Mills is an artists you need to experience to understand. It is difficult to describe the impact he can have when on form and you certainly can’t do him justice. But I can try... If you are open to any form of music Mills can turn you into a believer. The style and electricity that he creates when behind the decks is phenomenal and he gives a huge amount of depth to what can be monotonous banging techno. Very few DJs have this ability, and Jeff Mills is one of the gifted. Mills works with pure precision, tweaking and touching knobs, buttons, slides and records to what seems like microsurgical detail makes his twitching style of mixing leave you in awe. He is endlessly working, constantly having with 3 records on the go and never resting for more than a few brief moments and who will regularly breeze through over 60 records in an hour. The man's immaculate style and class speaks for it self. It's the refinement and the incredible power that he brings fusing records together that make him of the world's finest DJs. Irrelevant of genre. As with the Chems, the visuals Jeff Mills had prepared for his set were nothing short of stunning, the opening sequence featuring the astronauts (seen above) coupled with impressive lighting endless smoke machine usage made for a stunning setting. The plan was always to catch Mills, but to swim around various other parts of the venue to catch much of what was going on in the Pub. But, he had us glued to the dancefloor and we remained there until what was something after 5am. Unfortunately what I was expecting to be an outdoor arena titled 'Sonar Park' was actually an indoor arena and for some reason 'Sonar Pub' was outdoor... go figure. The booking was done with the lack of clashes in mind, with Jeff Mills finishing and Laurent Garnier kicking it off over in the Park arena at 5am. When we got to Sonar Park, a live act was on... a group known as 'The Soft Pink Truth' and if you think their name sounds weird, you should witness their live performance. It was like watching a train crash. Irrelevant of the music which was somewhat sidelined to the other goings on, we were stuck... once again glued to our space watching a story unfold. When we arrived Drew Daniel - the Pink Truth front man - was wearing a black cape, a few minutes later it was gone. And this was only the beginning of the crazy wardrobe to reveal itself. In the space of 15 minutes or so, he went from cape, to no cape - revealing what appeared to be a womens silk halterneck. That didn't last long either as he got that off, now half naked pale - white new yorker skin on show for all to enjoy as the live performance of their 'Confessions' took my Soft Pink viriginal ears by surprise. The lyrics, which are about as good as you get in terms of offending a decent portion of the general population were ..."Jesus was a cocksucking Jew from Gallilee. Jesus was just like me — a homosexual nymphomaniac." Not that I'm religious in any form, but yeah... lets just say Laurent who was sitting on the back of the stage in the main DJ booth and didn't look all to impressed by what he had to follow in what was barely minutes away. As a final surprise, Drew brought up his 'friend' a woman to help with vocals. She took the limelight for a moment and somehow, Drew managed to transform himself one last time. Jumped out from behind a table wearing some short pink fluffy outfit together with some way-too short - pink short shorts and knee guards... the final cherry on top was the huge strap-on waving around as he got his groove on. Aaaaaaaaaanyway... they were hurried off the stage as their performance ran overtime, and Laurant, in the safety of his raised DJ booth way back on the stage kicked things of with the Pet Shop Boys. He turned in some great house music and as the sun rose and we decided after what was a massive day, evening, night and now morning it was time to go home.
RA