BARCLONA, Spain (Top40 Charts/ Sonar Festival) - The 15th Sonar Festival of Advanced
Music and Multimedia Art in Barcelona take place June 19, 20, 21. The programme for the 15th edition of Sonar is based on two main themes - the 'female factor' in today's music and 'hybridism' as the result of the intersection of musical genres and subgenres. Women have pride of place on the bill. Unquestionable divas of modern pop like
Goldfrapp and
Roisin Murphy provide a contrast to the confrontational and multicultural glamour of
M.I.A. or the vocal alchemy of Camille, the new muse of the 'chanson francaise'. Leading figures that are impossible to label, such as Justice, Yelle, Diplo, and Boys Noize give this year's programme an injection of hybrid energy and a proud display of the spirit of 'Do It Yourself'.
It will be a scenario for encounters and reencounters. Two short-lived fleeting but legendary duos will be reunited at Sonar - synthesiser pop legends Yazoo, and Mike Banks together with Jeff Mills, the genesis of Underground Resistance. On a contemporary note, Jamie Cullum and his brother Ben Cullum join forces with the former member of Underworld Darren Emerson to create BC vs JC featuring Darren Emerson. The collaborators and protegees of Kanye West, A-Trak and Kid Sister, combine decks and rhymes with the new phenomenon DJ Mehdi.
SonarMatica
This year, SonarMatica 2008 takes a close look at the fascinating origins of cinema. In 1895, the Lumiere brothers, inventors of the film projector, performed their first public projection, a show which standardised our view as viewers during the twentieth century, the century of the image.
However, before that, magic lanterns, cineoramas, zoetropes, flip books and chronophotographs were some of the surprising contraptions that had contributed to creating the art of moving images. It was a universe of artifacts that gave another way of looking at things, by means of 360-degree projections, three-dimensional images and ghostly apparitions. Curiously, this range of possibilities is now being revived by twenty-first century multimedia art.
SonarMatica explores the updating of the potential of those technologies by some of the most significant contemporary new media artists such as Marnix De Nijs, Julian Oliver and Andy Cameron. Enhanced reality installations, devices with panoramic vision and audiovisual spectacles come together in this display in order to look at new ways of constructing images. It is an exhibition that will enable visitors to the festival to rediscover the world of visual representation through the eyes of a child, through the eyes of someone seeing the dream factory for the first time.
SonarMatica 2008 is the second installment of the trilogy of exhibitions focusing on revisiting the XIX Century in the digital era. The project began last year with the Et Voila! display on magic and technology, and aims to look at look into the future of contemporary art from the perspective of the effervescence of its past.
Hybrid beings with a human head and the body of an animal from a mysterious 'genetic experimentation' laboratory in China are at the centre of the festival's image. The image of Sonar 2008 is mainly in video format and can be seen on the Internet. It consists of seven 1-minute recordings in home video format, filmed in a in mysterious location and showing beings with a disconcerting genetic make-up, that are half human and half animal. The videos are shot in the back of a 'genetic experimentation' laboratory in a remote location in central China. The beings that are the results of biomolecular experimentation are filmed in this setting.
The ultimate objective of these experiments is to create a new species of pet like those that used to be exhibited in traveling circuses, like the alligator woman or snake boy. The pets are shown locked in cages and laid out on a kitchen table while they timidly answer the questions asked in Chinese from outside the cage by unseen speakers. These videos have been gradually uploaded, as viral marketing, to the fake website https://www.b1158.cn/b1158.html and on YouTube, with no links to the Sonar festival made clear.
The result has been spectacular - there were 180,000 hits in only two days, it was number 13 in the YouTube 'Most Viewed' ranking and number 3 in the Science and Technology section. Today, when the festival image is revealed, we have now created links between the videos and the festival's home page www.sonar.es.
Sonar 2008 Artists
Asstrio (ES)
Bass Clef (Blank Tapes/UK)
Blackjoy (FR)
CaboSanRoque (ES)
Chacho Brodas (Del Palo/ES)
Christopher D Ashley (Sunday Best/UK)
DJ Key (Funky Noise/MA)
El Guincho (Discoteca Oceano/ES)
First Aid Kit (Closer/ES)
Jneiro Jarel's Shape Of Broad Minds (Lex/US)
Kalabrese pres. The
Rumpelorchestra (Muve/CH)
Kid Acne (Lex/UK)
Konono N1 (Crammed Discs/CD)
Le Rok (Karaoke Kalk/DE)
Little Dragon (Peacefrog/SE)
Matmos (Matador/US)
Nisei vs Za (BCore-Acuarela/ES)
Northern State (Ipecac/US)
Pan Sonic (Mute-Blast First/FI)
Quiet Village (!K7/UK)
Take (Eat Concrete/US)
Tara de Long (Fatal Recordings/US)
Tender Forever (Green Ufos/US)
The Black Dog (Soma/UK)
The Duloks (UK)
The Field (Kompakt/SE)
Two PIAS DJs (Pias/ES)
Yellow Swans (Load/US)
Yo Majesty (US)
CAPSULE presents
Pram (Domino/UK)
ZX Spectrum Orchestra (Warm Circuit/UK)
DIRTY presents
Dirty Sound System (FR)
Discodeine (FR)
Pilooski (FR)
FLOGSTA DANSHALL & HARMONIA present SKWEEE
Rigas Den Andre, Pavan, Joxaren
& Daniel Savio (Flogsta Danshall/SE)
Randy Barracuda, Mesak, Sla
& Eero Johannes (Harmonia/FI)
NINJA TUNE & COUNTER RECORDS present
Daedelus (US)
J Mountain (UK)
The Heavy (UK)
The Long Lost (US)
OSAKA INVASION presents
Bogulta (JP)
DJ Scotch Egg (Load/JP)
Maruosa (Renda/JP)
Ove Naxx (Accelmuzhik/JP)
Thursday 19 June
Fira Gran Via (M2): SonarPark
Ben Watt (Buzzin' Fly/UK)
Goldfrapp (Mute/UK)
Leila (Warp/UK)
Friday 20 June
Fira Gran Via (M2)
BC vs JC feat. Darren Emerson (UK)
Boys Noize (Boysnoize Records/DE)
Diplo (Mad Decent/US)
Erol Alkan (UK)
Ewan Pearson (Misericord/UK)
Frankie Knuckles (Def Mix/US)
Hercules and Love Affair (DFA-EMI/US)
Justice (Ed Banger/FR)
Madness (Lucky Seven Records/UK)
Rob Da Bank (Sunday Best/UK)
Roisin Murphy (EMI/IE)
The Pinker Tones (Pinkerland/ES)
Yelle (Source Etc./FR)
BBC Radio 1 presents
Flying Lotus (Warp/US)
Mala (Digital Mystikz/UK)
Mary Anne Hobbs (BBC Radio 1/UK)
Shackleton (Skull Disco/UK)
Programmed by Mary Anne Hobbs
MINUS presents CONTAKT
Gaiser (US)
Heartthrob (US)
Magda (US)
Marc Houle (CA)
Richie Hawtin (CA)
Troy Pierce (US)
RED BULL MUSIC ACADEMYRADIO presents
Buraka Som Sistema (PT-AO)
Theo Parrish (Sound Signature/US)
Friday 20 June
L'Auditori
Basquiat Strings (F-IRE/UK)
Saturday 21 June
Fira Gran Via (M2)
Antipop Consortium (US)
Chloe (Kill the DJ/FR)
DJ Mehdi (FR) vs A-Trak feat. Kid Sister (US)
DJ Yoda Magic Cinema Show (Antidote/UK)
Dubfire (Sci+Tec/US)
M.I.A. (XL/UK)
Miss Kittin (Nobody's Bizzness/FR)
Neon Neon (Lex/UK-US)
Oscar Mulero (Warm Up-Zero Oscillator/ES)
Ricardo Villalobos (Sei Es Drum/CL)
Soulwax (Pias/BE)
Spank Rock (Big Dada/US)
X-102 discovers The Rings of
Saturn (Underground Resistance/US)
Yazoo (Mute/UK)
DIAL presents
Efdemin (DE)
Pantha Du Prince (DE)
ED BANGER RECORDS presents
Busy P. (FR)
Krazy Baldhead (FR)
Nil (FR)
SebastiAn (FR)
FREERANGE presents
Jimpster (UK)
Milton Jackson (UK)
Saturday 21 June
Palau de la Musica Catalana
Camille (Virgin/FR)
... + artists soon
