Non-stop dancing on the second day of Sónar, starring a cast of DJs who crowned themselves in the first night session with the performance of Aphex Twin, the artist that other artists want to see. The public also wanted to see him, of course, who filled the SonarClub in the “early” 22 hours to see this legend of the dance floors. It has taken four years for Richard Davis James, the father of IDM (intelligent dance music), to present a new project that brings him back to a festival he has not visited since 2011.
To perform his ambient, rhythmic and powerful music, Aphex Twin quartered himself in a metal shelter in the middle of the stage, with a huge bucket of the same material over his head. The two bodies served as support for immense screens that syncopatedly emitted asymmetric constructions of all kinds of tonalities, as well as cybernetic iconography intermingled with lights and lasers that surrounded the entire track to the acclaim of the audience. A futuristic dream in which it was planned to enjoy the session of the Northern Irish duo Bicep and the performance of Fever Ray, among other artists scheduled until dawn.
Previously, the daytime Sónar had been in charge of warming the spirits with performances from all styles and continents to please an audience that filled the Montjuïc venue at six in the afternoon, when some kind clouds had calmed the midday sun . Musa Keys’ amapiano, Dalila’s breakbeat or Alejandro Silva’s session, better known as Merca Bae, played through the speakers on the different stages. Producer of artists such as Bad Gyal, whom he will accompany today Saturday as a DJ, the one from Salamanca used grime, dembow and dancehall with reggaeton rhythms to get a SonarPark crowd full of people eager to dance. Rhythmic but different was the offer of MikeQ, a DJ from New Jersey who became the standard-bearer of African-American and Latin ballroom drag culture through the strong rhythm and marking of the vogue-house that echoed over the Village yesterday.
In another wave, Ryoji Ikeda’s session sounded, a cerebral minimalist timbre proposal by the Japanese visual artist, who works with flickering machines reducing sound structures to sometimes claustrophobic heights, binary and industrial sounds combined with visuals that painted the SonarHall in black and white, full to overflowing where absorbed looks intersected with willing ones and some of surprise.
To bring back the color it was necessary to wait for Max Cooper and his 3D/AV show, in which this PhD in biology flooded the faces of the attendees with warm images. Two superimposed screens, one translucent, walled the artist in this captivating journey through immersive landscapes, from galactic scenes to mathematical fractals moving at full speed, abstract visualizations of scientific and natural systems that followed each other to the rhythm of a slow techno.
The only “but” that could be put to Max Cooper’s performance was that it coincided in time with Daito Manabe’s. After giving a masterclass and collaborating on the visuals for Nosaj Thing’s show, this Japanese cult 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 the audience dance.
At that very moment, The Blessed Madonna’s show was starting at the Village, an expert in creating festive atmospheres as she had already demonstrated in previous visits to Sónar. Wearing a black T-shirt with the Pietà of Miguel Ángel, the DJ from Kentucky put on stage twenty bailongos representative of the LGBTI community, while they played their mixes of house, techno and pop. Music punctuated with the energy that has made this dj creditor of the qualifier “rompetablas” who yesterday chose to invert the equation, bringing the party to the stage and, from there, transferring it to an enchanted audience with the idea
What was not vacated was the Sónar floor, which hosted London DJ Eliza Rose to continue the dance session on 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, was in charge of closing it magnificently.
