Sónar enjoys one of its most successful editions | Catalonia

With the first rays of the sun on Sunday, the 30th edition of Sónar will end, a festival that, as was recalled on Saturday afternoon at the balance press conference, was conceived by two musicians and a journalist who had never organized a concert. Today it is a festival that has already achieved one of the best attendance figures in its history, reaching 120,000 spectators, of which 68% have been national and 32% international. Defined by its directors (Ricard Robles, Enric Palau and Sergi Caballero) as one of the most placid editions, in fact they seemed very relaxed, they placed the accent on local talent and its expansion, on the character of a cultural celebration that Sónar signifies, on the fact that a performance as radical as that of Aphex Twin was massive and that the festival is open to both brutalism and intimacy and hedonism. Attendance at Sónar by day was 50,000 people (3 days) and 70,000 at night, which could be exceeded on its second and last night, on Saturday.

For its part, the first night of the festival, Friday, dedicated, if necessary, to Aphex Twin, who behaved as on his first visit, 26 years ago at the Doctor Music Festival. Corrected and increased. Guideline: if the audience expects to dance, Richard D James makes music that is impossible for dancing, an avalanche of broken and superimposed rhythms, disruptive, saturated and abrasive that can be labeled whatever you like (techno, IDM, drum&bass, loud napalm, poisonous ambient, heavy cavalry charge, experimental) but which respond to the anarcho-punk-hooligan spirit of the Irishman. Tucked into a kind of cage, with a cube on top that, like the cage, received images at the speed of their beats, Aphex Twin put on a deranged rave in what was perhaps one of the opening performances with the largest audience in the history of the central hangar of Sónar nocturne. It ended with music at full blast and he absent, as if slipping that he had only been there to deceive us. Aggressive and acid are monastic concepts to describe what was played there, cradled by a festival that feels comfortable when it simultaneously activates head and feet.

In this sense, the 30-year-old Sónar, which beyond giving Ángel Molina the closing of a stage this morning, has not wanted to blow out candles out of complacency, has had tours for all tastes. Thus, while Artificial Intelligence passed through its agoras with the disturbing fear that it would reproduce human stupidity, music conceived by digital errors was made in the Hall –glitch-, in a flow of precise, clear and mathematical sounds set with a black and white screen that also showed damaged source codes. Everything is fallible, Ryoji Ikeda said with his performance, nothing is certain, there is never only one face. Like those of beauty, angular and digitally baroque with Oneohtrix Point Never, minimalist with Ikeda. Like the political fiction of Kode 9 and Scottish independence in space. Like romanticism itself, which can be staged by a female quintet dressed in the most eccentric and disturbing way (cadaveric makeup, illuminated cloud-hat, post-nuclear wedding dress) who, responding for Fever Ray, offered one of the festival’s concerts. Twisted romanticism dramatized with the hands and movements of the performers, with unusual intonations for a synth-pop nothing complacent through danceable pieces like that carbon dioxide which is part of the recent radical romantics who articulated the repertoire of the Swedish Karin Dreijer, leader of the project. A really personal group talking without nonsense about something as hackneyed as love.

But Sónar, which last night was expecting concerts as promising as those of Little Simz, an extraordinary and committed black and female voice of English hip-hop, Bad Gyal, our international urban queen, Eric Prydz and his 3D show, Samantha Hudson or Richie Hawtin, has provided more moments to remember in a fairly round edition that has also had lowercase letters. Like the Jokkoo project, a residency sponsored by the festival and the Institut Ramón Llull (local culture promoter), understanding that contemporary Catalan culture is being redefined. Thus, children of the African diaspora residing in Barcelona went to Nairobi to return staging an aggressive cocktail of rap and digital Afrofuturism to open minds now that difference may be in danger in the hands of obtuse and coarse traditionalism. Yes, you can be black, a citizen of Catalonia and sing in Wolof. The festival also featured excellent examples of local music, such as the fascinating Marina Herlop, classically trained music with a non-exclusive experimental character, or Desert, a cross between the club and the most satin pop. And the phrase of the festival, uttered by a 40-year-old cubata at the ready while Aphex Twin dislocated limbs: can’t we go to a normal disco? Well that, Sónar.

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