The Sónar Festival, Europe?s cathedral of electronic music

Barcelona (CNA).- The 17th edition of the Sónar Music Festival of Avanced Music and Multimedia Art opened its doors last Thursday and continued for three days. Organisers expectations were exceeded with a total of 84,000 visitors in attendance at Sonar 2010. The festival was organised in two parts, Sónar by Day, which took place in Barcelona’s city centre and Sónar by Night, which brought vistors to a larger venue in L’Hospitalet.
The festival includes not only live music, but art, medialab presentations, DJ sets, film, and more. This along with its backdrop of Barcelona have made Sonar one of the most established and well-known music festivals in Europe. The 2010 programme brought artists like LCD Soundsystem, Air, the Chemical Brothers, Roxy Music, Hot Chip, Plastikman, Caribou, Dizzee Rascal, NOSAJ Thing Visual Show and many more to the Catalan capital. In addition to the world’s top names of electronic music, local artists, up and coming bands and more experimental trends had also their place. Local musicians Delorean and bRUNA cativated the audience with their great performances.

The festival lasted 3 entire days. From noon until 10 p.m, Sónar by Day took place in Barcelona’s downtown, at the Centre of Contemporary Culture, the Museum of Contemporary Art and surrounding squares. The “Sónar Village”, an area with artificial grass and various kiosks, hosted more than 30.000 people. Six parallel stages hosted a wide variety of musical and visual arts. Sónar by Night took concertgoers to the Gran Via venue in L’Hospitalet, a massive fair trade complex converted into a three-stage club which opened from 22 p.m. until sunrise. Headlining bands paired with intricate video projections moved the crowd into the night and for some, into the next day. Parallel events where also taking place in other spots of the city.

Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda opened the festival Thursday night at the Grec Theatre with his installation entitled “Spectra”. Ikeda is considered to be one of the most influential figures in the world of audiovisual minimalism, a title in which he demonstrated to Barcelona. His majestic installation included 64 powerful devices that project light into the sky, shooting a beam of light into the night for the whole city to watch.