If there is a fetish name that can well symbolize the crazy Saturday nights at Sónar, it is The Chemical Brothers, faithful tandem to our stages that stepped on the festival for the first time in 2005. To the cry of ‘Block rockin’ beats’, one of their first milestones, the Manchester duo set the Fira Gran Via venue to dance in the most expeditious way, appealing to that subgenre called ‘big beat’, which they helped to invent in the 90s and that in its day attracted ‘indies’ and rockers to the emerging techno liturgy.
Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons are known gurus in the field, and their celebrated bravado (“superstar dj’s, here we go!”, they warned in another obvious ‘hit’, ‘Hey boy hey girl’) corresponded with reality: overwhelming session, his, author’s electronic ‘mascletà’, with a richness of ‘tempos’ and textures, drifting towards trance, disco-funk or the psychedelic vanishing point, always with its imperial and invasive ways, tying the public short. And with sophisticated audiovisual coverage, a complex work of ‘mapping’, a spectacle in itself, signed by his historical accomplice Adam Smith in tandem with Marcus Lyall. And there, in the shadows, between those giant screens that captured the eyes, the discreet ‘brothers’, refining their role as machine operators oblivious to glamour.
Heading for the classics
They came this time with the credentials of ‘No geography’, an album released in 2019 whose tour was sabotaged by the pandemic. They did not abound in that material, although ‘Eve of destruction’ slipped nice disco-funky bass lines and ‘MAH’ accelerated the ‘bpms’ in terrorist mode. Regarding the repertoire of other European events on this tour, in Barcelona there was less recent material and greater attention to the catalogue. There were the showy playoffs of ‘Dig your own hole’, ‘Setting sun’ (their first success, from 1996, in which they had Noel Gallagher, from Oasis, as an accomplice) and that ‘Galvanise’ with exotic glitter. Granite themes that unleashed the ‘rave’ atmosphere in the fair pavilion baptized as SonarClub, with massive influx, on the closing night of this 29th edition of Sónar.
If the evening started with techno power, before, in the afternoon session, a subtle proposal with a mystical halo reigned, that of Maria Arnal and Marcel Bagés, premiering ‘Hiperutopia’ at the festival, which is an enriched approach to their award-winning latest album, ‘Clamor’ (of which they toured all the songs except one, ‘Alborada’). The voices, core ingredients of the album in friction with electronics, were multiplied by 36, as many as members of the Choir of Noies of l’Orfeó Català, directed by Buia Reixach Feixes. XXL size that enhanced not only the polyphonic amplitude to heavenly heights but also the scenic effect of Greek tragedy: long robes, gestures and fuss in mathematical tension with Arnal, giving dramatic coverage to each of the songs.
Holy Herndon in virtual mode
Ultra-modern music that made an ancient echo resonate, invoking the “fire that burns within & rdquor; and appealing to social change with its cosmic metaphors of wounded meteorites. In-depth approach to ‘Cant de la Sibil·la’, after which Arnal, leader and dancing angel, warned, in a colloquial way: “Ara flipareu”. And there was a magical dialogue, in ‘Murmuri’, with my gringa friend Holly Herndon through her ‘alter ego’, the computer tool Holly +, before shaking minds and bodies with the choruses of ‘Ventura’ and ‘Fiera de mí’ to the beat of a mechanical ‘beat’.
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Neither Bagés nor the third pillar of the tandem, the artificer David Soler, played any guitar and barricaded themselves in their work tables in front of the computer screens. But that intersection of vocal purity and technology may well mark the course of music. On this last day of Sónar we also had both things separately: the troupe of ludic-loud-mouthed rappers Locoplaya, entertaining the ‘village’, and on the machine side, the electronic-‘ambient’ proposal, with tribal gestures, by Craig Lion.
is this a proven New York punk veteran (production of initiatory albums by Ramones, Suicide, Blondie and Richard Hell, that’s nothing), that in reviewing his ‘Anthology of interplanetary folk music’ he was very uninterested in choruses and guitar ‘riffs’. The transgressive myths of yesterday evolve, and Sónar has always been there to welcome them. Party and science found their way again at the festival, that after burning the ships this morning is already thinking about 2023.