All-out dancing on the second day of Sónar, starring a cast of DJs who were crowned in the first night session with the performance of Aphex Twin, the artist that other artists want to see. He also wanted to see the public, of course, who filled the SonarClub at an early 10 pm to see this legend of the dance floor. It took Richard Davis James, the father of IDM (intelligent dance music) four years, to present a new project that brings him back to a festival he hadn’t visited since 2011.
To perform his powerful, rhythmic ambient music, Aphex Twin hunkered down in a metal shelter in the middle of the stage, with a huge bucket of the same material on his head. Both bodies served as support for huge screens that syncopated asymmetric constructions of all kinds of tones, as well as cybernetic iconographies interspersed with lights and lasers that enveloped the entire dance floor to the acclaim of the public. A futuristic reverie in which it was planned to enjoy a session by the Northern Irish duo Bicep and a performance by Fever Ray, among other artists scheduled until dawn.
Previously, Sónar by Day had been in charge of heating up the spirits with performances of all styles and continents to satisfy an audience that filled the Montjuïc venue at six in the afternoon, when some kind clouds had appeased the midday sun. Musa Keys’ amapiano, Dalila’s breakbeat or Alejandro Silva’s session, better known as Merca Bae, sounded through the speakers on the different stages. Producer of artists such as Bad Gyal, whom he will accompany today as a DJ, the man from Salamanca used grime, dembow and dancehall with reggaeton rhythms to put a SonarPark full of people wanting to dance into dance. Rhythmic but different was the offer from MikeQ, a New Jersey DJ who became a standard bearer of the Afro-American and Latin ballroom drag culture through the strong and marked rhythm of vogue-house that reverberated over the Village this Friday.
The session by Ryoji Ikeda sounded on another wave, a cerebral proposal with a minimalist timbre by the Japanese visual artist, who works with shimmering machines reducing sound structures to levels that are sometimes claustrophobic, binary and industrial sounds combined with visuals that painted the space black and white. SonarHall, full to overflow where the absorbed glances intertwined with the willful and the occasional surprised.
To recover the color, we had to wait for Max Cooper and his 3D/AV show, in which this doctorate in Biology flooded the faces of the attendees with warm images. Two superimposed screens, one of them translucent, enclosed the artist in this captivating journey through immersive landscapes, from galactic scenes to fast-moving mathematical fractals, abstract visualizations of scientific and natural systems passing by to the rhythm of slow techno.
The only downside that could be put to Max Cooper’s performance was that it coincided in time with that of Daito Manabe. After giving a masterclass and collaborating on the visuals for the Nosaj Thing show, this cult Japanese artist offered his own session on Stage D, filling the screen with colorful images that followed each other to the beat of a brittle sound that at times made people dance. to the public.
Around the same time, the show by The Blessed Madonna began in the Village, an expert in creating festive atmospheres, as she had demonstrated on previous visits to Sónar. Wearing a black T-shirt with Miguel Ángel’s Pietà, the Kentucky DJ put twenty bailongos representative of the LGTBI community on stage, while her mixes of house, techno and pop sounded. Music played with the energy that has earned the title of “tablebreaker” to this dj who this Friday chose to reverse the equation, taking the party to the stage and from there transferring it to an audience delighted with the idea.
What was not dislodged was the Sónar track, which welcomed the London DJ Eliza Rose to continue with the dance session to the rave and techno rhythms that she mixes with all kinds of sounds, from jungle to grunge, before Selecta Glossy, responsible for opening the daytime session, will be in charge of closing it in style.
