Friday 20/06/08 Day Two, Sonar Festival @ Barcelona, Spain

According to the weather forecast, Barcelona was hotter than anywhere in Africa or South America today. It was believable by midday, so indoors for the cool respite of SonarCinema and the Soulwax movie 'Part of the weekend never dies'. It's edited with the same ferocity of a 2manyDJ's set and is just as fun. Also in the culture building was a row of laptops with 'a la carte' menus of short films. Jonathan Caouette selected some of the programme and if you'd seen his 'Tarnation' documentary, you knew it would be a wild ride. Balloon phobia and hotdog processing were a couple of the shocks on show. Just round the corner were the Sonarmatica interactive art installations. With 'We are the time, we are the famous' you could have yourself projected on multiple screens, each with a time delay.

Still hot but back outside we venture for a surprise collaboration between El Guincho and Ryan McPhun from The Ruby Suns, each with sampler and drum-kit apiece. They looked like beach dudes and El G rocked a surf guitar. Precision didn't seem to be a priority, instead it was all energy, drums bashed with one hand and sampler programming with the other. Sometimes the percussion sounded brittle and elsewhere booming hollow. The sampled noise was a riot of choral shouting and steel pans. The final couple of numbers were simple and effective, with samplers playing techno while the band hit drums.     
                
Underground, Tender Forever was on her own, so she made imaginary conversation with the Beyonce projection behind her, like Miranda July at the start of 'Me and You and Everyone We Know’. Also like July, you could call her aggressively cute, but the set was at least diverting, using theatrical tricks such as dance choreography with the video projection. Her stripped back ukulele cover of Timberlake's 'My Love' proved that underneath the Timbaland magic, it's a great song. 

Kalabrese's Rumpelorchestra featured default minimal laptop beats, embellished with live drums, bass, trombone, trumpet and singing. Occasionally the laptop got a rest while the orchestra played straight-up strutting funk. Sloganeering vocals suit that genre best and Kalabrese had a good one...

"Wanna move like a snake and dress like a tiger"