With industrial techno, kraut-pop, grime kingpins and a digital trade show, Barcelona’s electronic knees-up is by turns dizzying and momentous
A festival like Sónar does not care for lethargy. It takes one look at your weak limbs then drills you with intense electronic beats that sound like parallel universes being ripped apart. I know this because, at 4pm on Friday, I’m being engulfed by industrial-spiked techno so menacing that any exhaustion has run away in abject fear. The person responsible for this is Vessel, a young Bristolian producer on a mission to turn any venue he plays into a boiler room with distorted warning sirens on loop. His music is vast and impressively brutal.
The irony is that, while Vessel is as cold as steel inside, outside the Barcelona sun is burning hot. Across the street from the festival, local schoolchildren are hosting a talent show in the playground and singing Shake It Off. But within the festival walls, there are experimental artists in every shadowy corner. It doesn’t matter what the temperature is: any time is a good time to showcase electronic music that is redefining the cutting edge. One minute you can be outside on the AstroTurf watching violinist Owen Pallett’s majestic kraut-pop as people soak each other with water balloons, the next you’re sat in an auditorium, locked in drone duo KTL’s vice-like grip, and thinking that this is definitely what sleep paralysis must feel like.
Continue reading...by Kate Hutchinson via Electronic music | The Guardian
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