Sonar 2010 — from the scene of the event

Sonar is the main temptation at the start of every summer. It's hard to determine which of its factors is the most alluring: the beach one, the party one, the musical one or the architectural one. One way or another, at a certain moment they merge into one multicoloured mosaic and you realize that you did the right thing after all, leaving all your affairs in the bored city and starting your holiday in Barcelona.

As with any event of this level, the preparation for this Spanish festival by the organizers is thorough and lengthy. This year, besides booking eminent artists and some fresh musicians, the Sonar team shot a rather surreal film about two wandering ghosts who converse with each other in Russian — Finisterrae ('finis terrae' — the edge of the world, as the territory of present-day Galicia was called in antiquity). It was screened periodically during the festival days in a special cinema hall. As we've mentioned more than once, Sonar 2010 was for the first time split between two cities — Barcelona and A Coruña — and was dedicated to Galicia. Judging by the number of attractive international young people who filled the little streets of Barcelona during the festival days, the Catalan capital was by inertia recognized as its main venue. Only fans and connoisseurs of Celtic culture, and the artists themselves, headed off to Galicia.

By the count of the organizers of Sonar 2010, this year over three days — from 17 to 19 June — the event was attended by 84,976 people, of whom 32,682 belonged to the audience of the daytime part of the festival and 52,294 to the night one. That said, the event's regulars strongly recommended paying more attention to Sonar By Day. In essence these are concert performances, live acts and DJ sets on four stages (two indoor and two open-air), set up on the grounds of the university courtyard next to the museum of contemporary art MACBA. Thus a most difficult dilemma constantly arose: to relax on the sand of Barceloneta beach (the sea was still cold for swimming — small consolation for those who stayed home) to the sound of the waves, or to trample the artificial-grass surface in thirty-degree heat to the rhythms of Moodyman, Uffie, Caribou, Space Dimension Controller, Tim And Puma Mimi and many other artists whose names appeared in the festival program for the first time. Though salvation from the exhausting sun could always be found, for example, in the Sonar Hall space, where the live set of the French project Aufgang, exactly on schedule, gave way to the hypnotic performance of the Britons King Midas Sound — one of the strongest personal impressions of Sonar By Day.

A couple of hours for a shower, dinner, an aperitif — and you're already sitting on the bus heading to the night venue of Sonar. This too is 4 stages — two in the open air and two indoors, in a large exhibition hangar. The headliners of this part of the festival were LCD Soundsystem, 2Many DJs, Hot Chip, Plastikman, Booka Shade, Flying Lotus, The Chemical Brothers, Matthew Herbert's One Club, Fuck Buttons.

A few words about the Off Sonar program — a scattered parasite-festival that took place this year from 16 to 22 June. As at no other time of year, during the Sonar days Barcelona turns into a musical capital: showcases of the labels Mobilee, Upon You, Circus Company, Bpitch Control, Get Physical, Kompakt, Cadenza, Minus, Freude Am Tanzen and others on all sorts of boats, beaches and in the clubs of the city. Last year many of those present might have named as the best Off Sonar party the beach event of the label Minus (Chiringuito Calamar). This season just as memorable was the Resident Advisor night featuring Nicolas Jaar at the club Be Cool (at exactly that time The Chemical Brothers were on the Sonar By Night stage). The performance of the 19-year-old American lasted only an hour. If Elvis Presley had played electronic music, it would probably have looked exactly like that. After Nicolas, who seriously warmed up the spinning dance floor of Be Cool, control of the party was taken over by Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts. His set lasted much longer, exactly long enough to get tired and leave with a clear conscience to an after-party on one of Barcelona's terraces, without having managed to fall into the melancholic techno-trance of Isolée, who replaced Guillaume.

It remains to add that after a short reflection a simple, quite logical, though of course utopian idea came to mind about the ideal model for holding Sonar: to move all the events to one of the city beaches and set up a settlement of the kind seen at that not-unknown Ukrainian festival. Then there would be no need to cover huge distances between venues and to regret missed gigs, not to mention the miraculous properties of the sea air…