Back from Sonar '06

Here's a report of my 2006 Sonar festival experience.

Day 1 (June 14th) - The beginning
Me and Carl meet up at around 10 to grab the bus out to the airport. We arrive on time, check in our bags and go straight for the bar. Two pints later we are ready to board our flight to Münich. Another airport, another bar, two more beers and off we go to Barcelona. We fumble around for a while before we find the right terminal to pick up our bags, then we hop on the first bus to the city core. The hotel was not very difficult to find, and I was pleasantly surprised of the high standard and the awesome location.

We unpack a bit, buy ourselves a few beers and decide to check out the nearest surroundings and the Sonar by Day facilities. No stress, we find Sonar by Day after very little research (it's really close to our hotel) - and we're ready to check out the night life of Barca!

After just kind of randomly walking in the direction of the Sonar By Night area and popping in for a few beers and shots at some places, we end up in a biker bar for more drinks. We chat with some of the locals to try and find info about any POUNDING TECHNO MUSIC. Sure thing, one of the guys tip us off about something called Razzmatazz which he knew was the bomb 10 years ago, haha. What the hell we figure and catch ourselves a cab to the damn place. It turns out it's closed. Heh. Whatever, we get out of the cab and start to scan the area for like minded peeps. After some more walking (not that much really), we do find ourselves some sweet devil's audio - The Loft. Here's the flyer:


You see the text clear enough? Yes it says The Hacker, Oxia and Vitalic are playing on the 14th. We had no clue about this when we entered though, we just heard the good ol' bass and decided to check it out. 15 Euros poorer, two big ass jack&coke later we are in the groove. We stay at this place the whole night basically. One hundred percent awesomeness.

Day 2 (June 15th) - The "go bananas"-day
I wake up and immediately open a beer. We have big plans today. Gotta pick up our Sonar tickets, check out as much as possible on the first day of Sonar (by day) and then as a finisher go see the Insen performance by Alva Noto and Sakamoto. Guess what? Our master plan crash lands somewhere in the middle of Kansas.

We pick up our tickets just fine, after like one hour of queueing in the massively hot sun and downing several beers to quench our undying thirst. Now what? I think we went back to the hotel for some more drinking (red wine+coke ftw!). Then back again to the Sonar (by day) area to look at some of the acts. We cruise around for a while just taking the whole spectacle in. After reading the programme more closely we see that The Knife is playing at 17:00, tough luck though, it's completely packed and full. Off to The Dôme and Jake (The rapper). Killer showman, killer show, super music and I will try to get my hands on the album asap.

At around this hour I'm quickly becoming real proper wasted and my memory fails me. Me and Carl hung out and just chatted and got drunker, after a while we went to a bar and drank tons of Fernet Branca shots.

Day 3 (June 16th) - The "oh noes i feel ill"-day
Woke up with a smashing hangover. Decided to go out and have some coffee and cruise around town. Ate lunch at a place that seemed proper but was really feeding me germs to make me vomit over and over and over again the nearest 24 hours. Drank some sangria, chilled at the hotel room until the hangover was almost gone.. and that's about the time my food posioning kicked in massive style. Cheers. Couldn't move out of the hotel room so I missed basically all day 2 acts (Liars, Pole, Senior Coconut, etc) + all the first Sonar by Night artists (Jeff Mills, DJ Shadow, Jimmy Edgar, Nightmares on wax, Krush, Otto, Tiga, Laurent Garnier, etc). A real shame.

Day 4 (June 17th) - The end
Fuck! Still felt the death touch of the illness gripping me as I woke up. Managed to check out some random day acts anyway (Schneider.tm, Takemura, Kimmo & Samuli, Retina.it), and then a miracle happened. After having a well made vegetarian meal at a restaurant near our hotel I was able to slowly recover from my puking-marathon. We prepared for Sonar by Night.

Strolled down to the Sonar busses at around 23(?), got on, got out, got in. First reaction: OMFG! A complete airport complex was at Sonar by Night's disposition. Like 3 hangars and one outdoors area - all in the mega-shit-this-is-so-big scales. We ordered some beer, and indulged ourselves in the music; Hot chip, Isolée, The MFA, Audion got our full attention and then some glimpses of Goldfrapp and Miss Kittin. After the kittin we had to leave cause we had a plane to catch sadly.

I will upload some movie clips I recorded during the festival and hopefully a few tracks of the albums related to this text. Stay tuned!