If one looked carefully and paid attention to corners, nooks and double bottoms, echoes of the wild premiere of last year’s edition could still be found in the SonarClub, base camp of the nighttime faction of the festival. Smoking and rusty remains of the Sermon on the Mount 3.0, of the Apocalypse according to AphexTwin. Nothing to do, of course, with Air, champions of gaseous and Versailles pop, of fine and safe electronica, who last night picked up the baton of the furious apostle of techno and chaos. A question of sowing and harvesting in a festival made for variety and breadth. One year it’s extreme experience and sonic terrorism and the next, as if nothing had happened, retrofuturism and audiobeauty.
The latter, I’m not kidding, is what the French wanted to call twenty years ago, a time of maximum creative and commercial splendor that Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin relived on Friday at Sónar with the comprehensive review of ‘Moon Safari’, their debut from 1998. And yes, it was nice. And something leaden too. Too much affectation, Overdose of transcendence. Although, when you think about it, a little break after the accident didn’t hurt either. Laurent Garnier and the techno centrifuge Surgeon and Speedy J. Time to reset bones, pamper eardrums and prepare for Jessie Ware.
So cloud of keyboards, mattress of synthesizers and let yourself be lulled by ‘La femme d’argent’. Nuclear white and enclosed in a rectangular scenic box, something like a panoramic showcase of the Champs Elysees, the French entered not to kill, but almost: ten minutes of lunar excursion, sinuous underpass and blind capers on the wire that separates the progressive yawn pop elegance. The usual, come on. Air being Air, only with a slightly more attractive setup and a really attractive lighting design.
Atmosphere at Sónar by Day
ADRIAN QUIROGA
As the order of the concert was also that of the album, it fell at the first opportunity ‘Sexy boy’ and more than one melted the cell phone battery there. Stardust on the screens, expendable retropop chiribits on the instruments. Historical story, but not too much: track half full and noticeable chatter as one approached the rear. No one beats the stylish ones, though. Hence the collective hypnosis, the fainting between vocoders of ‘Kelly watch the sky’ and ‘You make it easy’ and, finally, the palatial romanticism floating over an area not very fond of subtleties.
It also happens that it is not always (almost never, come on) a good idea to play an album as it was sequenced for its publication: the logic of domestic listening is not the same as its transformation into a collective and communal experience. This serves to summarize the notable decline that came with ‘New star in the sky’ and ‘Le voyage de Pénélope’, the last of an album whose mark may not be as pronounced as its authors like to believe. In the encores, and to balance forces, we snack on great hits: ‘Venus’ as a monument to sophisticated electronic pop; rheumy regressions to the soundtrack of ‘The Virgin Suicides’ with ‘Highschool Lover’: and anticlimactic farewell with the robotic ‘Electronic Performers’. Luck of the screens and some light eruptions that promised something that the music did not quite deliver.
It is normal that Jessie Ware new disco diva and stage whirlwind with a loud voice from another era, all she had to do was go out surrounded by the winds and echoes of Studio 54 to relive the festival and put it in her pocket. ‘That! Feels Good’, ‘Shake the bottle’ and hedonism to the fullest. A force of nature, one hit after another. The ideal thing to face the early morning with renewed spirits, put a candle to Prince and let yourself be carried away by the roller of ‘What’s Your Pleasure’.
In the afternoon, slipper and boil. The weather lull on Thursday was an exception and the Sónar on Friday was the Sónar of a lifetime: great heat, people toasting in the sun and bacchanals of revelry and rhythm. What of Laurent Garnier, with the audience raising their arms to the sky as if waiting for manna from heaven and the Frenchman crowning himself for the millionth time as hero of the booth and old cat of the trot hose, it was worth seeing, yes, but no one had a better time at the festival than the Kenyan Kabeaushe. Fluorinated pop delirium, punk star attitude and costumes like mariachi bullfighters (or vice versa). Rave in full sun, ’24 hour party people’ and some songs that did wonders with the ‘socarrat’ of electronic pop. Nothing made sense and yet it was wonderfully fun.
A moment from Kabeaushé’s performance at Sónar
ADRIAN QUIROGA
And that, ultimately, is what people come to a festival like Sónar for: to jump with Laurent Garnier, get boggled by Kabeaushé’s rap-pop mix, and confirm that everything is coming back, including old-fashioned techno, very old, school that was torn apart by four hands Surgeon and Speedy J. No projections. No frills. Only shakes of the bass drum, rhythms of surgical precision and industrial plywood and, in short, the feeling of having spent a week in the engine of a Boeing 747. Half magical laboratory, half metallurgical industry. Master class and physical resistance test.
In other settings, and following the yellow brick road of Air’s ethereal pop, more things: the haunting keyboards of Prato Green, still far from goals like Marina Herlop or Maria Arnal but intriguing in its deconstruction of folk in Basque; the fantasy of synthesizers, video surveillance cameras and muscular techno-pop of the Colombian Ela Minus, something like Goldfrapp and Ladytron in armistice mode; and the classic piano without more of Kelly Moran. More rhythm? More dancing?
