Wednesday
After a longs half a day at work (well an hour with two hours in the pub) I met my brother and caught the train to Bristol which was a relatively quick and painless journey. My brother however decided that he didn't require his ticket to get through the barrier and was subsequently given a grilling by the ticket lady. Luckily she half believed his story and didn't fine him and we were away to the airport.
We were a little early for the plane so decided to sit outside in the sunshine rather than being stuck inside an boring airport terminal, my brother deciding to place himself on a huge ball of chewing gum - which is still on his coat I believe.
As we were going through airport security my brother thought it would be a good idea to bring about twenty five litres of perfume along. It's a wonder they let him on the plane. Security over we went to grab a beer, five pounds for one or ten pounds for a pitcher bit of a rip off but still cheaper than the beer on the plane which I didn't bother having.
The easyjet plane ride was fairly boring but pretty quickly, we arrive in barca about ten. Grabbed a foul tasting and expensive burger from McDonalds and then caught the Metro to our hostel. Felt pretty knackered and just took myself off to bed.
Thursday
Woke up rather early, grabbed some breakfast and then headed into town to collect our accreditation passes. We were too early to go into the festival so sat down and had the first foreign beer of the holiday in the cafe around the back of the MACBA/CCCB. Only one euro fifty but it was rather cool (cold) and windy in the shade and my plastic cup kept making attempts to jump off the table.
I don't think I've ever made the first act at Sonar having been recovering from some crappy party the previous night. But today I did, Imtech, playing soundscapes and summery music to a smallish crowd of supermodel types. The next thing I saw was Fur Voice a spanish artist who's music ranged from Whitey style pop music to avant garde noise, his visuals were very cool and I was very impressed. Not sure that my brother was. After this we strolled around the Sonarmatica area containing some intresting art/robot installations.
Sonar is quite strange in that they have a couple of acts on around 1pm and then apart from a DJ on in the main area nothing until 4pm. My brother and I were both pretty hungry so decided to go and eat all we could (actually we ate all we wanted) in an all you could eat restaurant. Lots of pizza and other such stodge. Nice paella though.
Back to the festival in time for Pete Tong who appeared to be arguing with the sound people, his face got more and more screwed up until in a fit of hiss he through his monitor speaker down the stairs leading up to the DJ booth. Eventually he cracked a smile and played a typically cheesy house set which was ok for a bit but became a little repetitive and hard work to dance to.
Wanting something a little more strange I went to see dp-S, they twanged a cello (or was it a double bass) and made clicks with some kind of oscillating machine for a good ten minutes and it appeared that they would continue doing this for their entire set so I quickly gave up on this (my brother had lasted about a minute). I can't remember what I did next I think I wandered around aimlessly not really watching anything (most likely I was looking at the very attractive ladies).
I wanted to see Caribou but for some inexplicable reason the organisers had placed them in the small marquee and it just became far too hot and crowded to stay in there for longer than about ten minutes. I caught a bit of Cluster and then decided that I'd had enough for the day. I met back up with my brother and we headed back to the hostel.
My brother wanted to go back out but I had to remind him that he didn't have any money to do so and instead we sat on the roof terrace and drank wine.
Friday
As we hadn't gone out till some ridiculous time in the morning I was able to get my brother out of his pit and actually get out to watch things at a reasonable time. The day took a similar vibe to the previous. We watched a spanish artist called Faraon who played live drums along to electronic soundscapes, he was pretty intense like his music but was very very good. Then we went and grabbed some food before coming back to the festival in time for the Bjork-alike Nedry. Good choice of music for a sunny afternoon.
The festival I think was far busier than I remember it ever being before and it was pretty packed trying to dance to Rude Taylor who was playing Space Terrace style housey house music to a very bouncey crowd. Highly enjoyable. Highly sweaty.
The highlight of the weekend for me was Kind Midas Sound, their set was voodoo. Almost pitch black half of the time and very very loud they to me they are the new Massive Attack.
I caught the end of the New Young Pony Club, I like the singer. ;)
We then decided to go and watch the football in an Irish Bar. My brother pissed me off by scrounging cigarettes of random people. Not good. Neither was the footsball. Bah!
We headed back to the hostel where time seems to get sucked into a void because the next thing it was around one in the morning and we were rushing to get to the site in order to see the LCD Soundsystem. They were very very very good. My brother didn't think so but then he has no taste in music, obviously.
I wandered around for a bit not really liking too much of the music (the Sugarhill Gang being prime examples that all live hip hop is terrible) that was being played until Hudson Mowhake came on around four in the morning who played cool messed up hip hop sounds. Unfortunately he'd only been given a 45 minute set so it was back to there not being much on. Booka Shade I feel you have to start listening to from the start of their set and I didn't really want to see 2manyDjs but this time they'd actually brought along some new old records and were ok (how much of it was actually live I wouldn't like to say). Danced around like a loon to Claude VonStroke for a while before bumping back into my brother and we decided to call it a morning.
