Thursday 18/06/09 Sonar Festival 2009, Day One @ Barcelona, Spain

Inside the beautiful SonarComplex church, Rominger started us up in style; the trumpet player was in briefs, hard-hat and sleeves with the rest of his shirt missing. The instruments were just as wacky, including wacka-wacka bass and a kazoo, which had no right to sound that classy. A whistle, balloons, sparklers and a confetti explosion ratcheted up the carnival atmosphere. Good clean fun, apart from the Deep Throat clips in the background.

On to SonarDome, which is much less dome-like than SonarComplex, confusingly. Cecile got some cosmic whooshing and sci-fi synth-noise from his machine. He also played a bass, beefing up the sound. This space-funk work-out was broken up with a knob-twiddling, 303-like acid number, all to the crowd's pleasure.

Last year, Jeff Mills re-ignited his old X-102 project at Sonar with Mike Banks. Even older is his The Wizard pseudonym, which Mills gave another day in the sun on the Village stage. With such a varied career, this nostalgia is forgiveable, here he mixed prime eighties party music. Amongst the hip-hop, Tom Tom Club's 'Wordy Rappinghood', one of the most joyous songs ever, didn't even bring a smile from Mills. That game-face suits his nosebleed-techno sets, but was funny here. 

Mulatu Astatke seemed far more at ease under the Dome. The smile said seen it all before and still loving it, while his hands glided over the vibraphone. The Heliocentrics band were much heavier (featuring both drummer and bongo player), giving the show a full, balanced sound. They switched from cool jazz to funk and all the musicians flitted in and out naturally with their solo's.   
               
After Astatke's good vibes, Tim Exile brought some malevolence to the underground SonarHall. One song was from a stalker's perspective, with what sounded like an auto-tune on an 'anti-tune' preset. This evil techno also had some thoroughly unpleasant, tinnitus-inducing high-end sonics.

It was still bright out in SonarVillage for Luomo, whose house music would've surely been better suited to the night, or at least under a roof. He was happy though, if a bit low-key behind the laptop. Jake 'Scissor Sister' Shears was the dramatic counter-point, tremulous of voice and dancing.

Back in the Dome, Jamie Woon's singing was over-bearing, with the music barely there. It was a pity the crowd thinned out, as the music livened up for the last three songs, from the stop-start rhythm of 'Spirals'. In this context, Woon's voice was more than palatable.  

Konono no1 were refused visa's for last year's festival and they made up for lost time, getting people dancing to the sound-check. For the actual show, the whole room was shaking it.
"Konono, dance, dance, dance" was the mantra, with a constant beat and thumb-piano ringing out as eighty minutes flew by under a trance-spell.   

Sonar Festival highlights