its hot. where do I begin.. I survived Sonar week in BCN with only a couple of scratches and a severe sunburn, which is a good thing. I at met Claire who is a friend of Adam from Cambridge, she now lives in Barcelona and works for an english weekly paper [BCN WEEK]. I met her on first night after my long trip over from NY and I was totally beat. we she was waiting for my with her folding bike at the entrance of the subway stop infront of my hotel, I knew it was her. we then went to a bar where we ran into her dealer and ended up having my first morrocan hash joint for the summer only two hours after arriving in the city, not bad. her dealer, like most meghrebis was obviously bisexual and was inspecting me like I was a potential boy for him. I would have gone for it, but the next day was Sonar, and there just was no time to waste with hot morrocans, its all about good electro right now.
I was a bit.. eh, disappointed with the line-up for Sonar-by-Day this year.. it was OK but the first day was the slowest.. which is good cuz it gave me time to check out the record fair, the exhibition, sonar cinema and all the other side things that come with the festival without missing out on good music. I met these two Iraqi sisters and their English friend, who of course asked me for drugs. apparently I would be an amazingly successful drug dealer. I was asked on average of 15 times a day during the festival if I had pills, hash, coke, or MDMA to sell.. I'm not sure what would make people assume I have drugs to sell, could it have been the way I look, the way I dance, or maybe the fannypack? not sure.
The first Sonar night was a special Beastie Boys concert and a rare performance of Narod Niki (a kind of electro orchestra of over 10 DJs programming music live on stage together). I was smart enough to sleep through the Beastie Boys and just made it in Time for Narod Niki which went on at about 2:20 am. It was pretty damn good.
Sonar days are long, the day begins at noon until 9pm then the night begins at midnight until 9 am. basically if you want to see all the acts of the festival then you have 3 hours to eat and sleep at night and 3 more hours to eat and sleep in the morning. I basically lived off Cheese, bread, beer, cigarettes, hash and water for 5 days..
Here are some of my favorites: there was a video installation that was a sort of video representation of sound. so these were extremely minimal, repetitive visuals that correspond to very minimal noise.. it was realy amazing, its hard to describe. but it was really good to see when I smoked a little too much hash and just wanted to hide from the sun and the crowds.
there was this guy (Tuomas Toivonen) from finland, his performance was pretty good. he programmed his music live on stage with a very minimal set and then he sang over the kicks. my favorites were: Now is Better, which went something like this (now is better, is better than ever, I love the present, I hate nostalgia.. contemporary forever..) very funny and I cant do it justice.. the other one I liked was Utopia and it went like this (U is for Utopia, U izzz for Utopia....) then he sings the concepts of Ebenezer Howard about city and country.. again it was pretty hilarious, I really appreciated it.
the highlight from Sonar-by-Night was by far the Ed Bangers showcase with DJ Mehdi and Justice, very good live, people were dancing like there is no tomorrow.
Digitalism was OK, I didnt think they were amazing live.. but they were not as bad as Junior Boys who I like alot and they sucked hard live.. their music definetley belongs in the studio and on a CD.. and what was up with the bass and the drummer?
enough about the music..
more then anything Sonar this year made me miss the NY gang (Caroline, Erik, Christopher, Erica and Venessa).. our last weekend together was amazing and I can only imagine that they are going to be here in BCN next year so we can do this sonar thing together.
as usual I met some really interesting people...
Meir, a very hot israeli who was checking me out and when I noticed I walked up to him and asked "I thought I saw you looking..." then we exchanged info and met up again the next night at a BPitch Control party in Nitsa Club.. it was very hot very crowded but we found each other.. he is very handsome.. it looks like we will both be in Berlin in a few weeks so we may meet again there.. the whole thing was very sweet and we only kissed but somehow there is a mutual interest to connect in the future.
Anastasia, a 40 year old British woman who is a free spirit, traveller and most importantly a very good person. we met at a bar where I went with Claire on my last night in BCN. Ana and I ended up sharing stories of love, hate and other existantial crap but it was pretty amazing, it was one of those meetings that you would never forget, there was a strange energy that we shared, it was pretty amazing..
then there were Freddy and Yanis. we made eye contact at the digitalism show then yanis approached me and offered me pills or something, I thought they were tryin to sell me drugs, so I said no and kept my distance.. ( I am still paranoid from my experience last year).. then the next day I saw them again and Freddy, the spanish guy, smiled at me.. I didnt do anything.. then I saw them again the following day at the post Sonar Beach party.. this time I approached Freddy and said that I have noticed him around but wasnt sure what his intentions were.. we ended up haning out for the rest of the day and the night.. and boy it got really fun, weird, tense, bizzare at moments..
I am running out of internet time so I gotta finish this later :)
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