Young, dumb and full of drums: Lessons learned from Sónar 2024

Plus Xylitol, Burial, Adelaida and more

The more percussion, the merrier

Back in the 1990s, when I first started going to clubs, the idea of DJ + percussionist was fairly widespread - too widespread, in fact, as it ended up becoming a cliché and slunk off back out of fashion.

Olof Dreijer and Diva Cruz made a arresting case for bringing the format back at Sónar 2024. Their hybrid performance sat somewhere in between DJ set and live act: Cruz played live percussion - often timbales - over Dreijer’s DJ set, with the former Knife man occasionally joining in on live percussion and even vocals, as on a storming version of Dreijer’s recent single Coral. 

The sound at the vast SonarVillage stage was a little echo-y, perhaps, but when the duo hit their stride they unleashed an uber-percussive, rolling hit of house fun that took me back to the days of NYC tribal house. They ended their set with an extended jam on Dreijer’s remix of Björk and Rosalía’s Oral, which made its case as the song of the summer.

Eclecticism has a limit. And that limit is the Red Hot Chili Peppers

I went into ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U’s DJ set with very high expectations. He was billed as possibly the best DJ in the world, a selector who would play everything from Queen to free jazz. That didn’t happen: ¥UK1MAT$U did, apparently, end his set with 10 minutes of traditional Catalan music (or something similar) but by that point I had left, the point of no return being his use of a Red Hot Chili Peppers acapella. That I could probably have taken, were it not for the fact that his set was, frankly, a little dull, a well mixed selection of house and techno that did little to stretch Sónar’s sonic boundaries.

Getting what you want can be risky

I should have been the perfect audience for Air playing Moon Safari. I lived in Paris in 1998 and I inhaled that record upon release, its classically melancholy vibe very much in tune with how I felt in the first few months of that year. 

And I did really enjoy the duo’s Sónar headline gig, in which Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel, complete with an excellent drummer, played a version of their classic debut that felt vibrant and alive, while still running faithful to the original. Beth Hirsch's angelic vocal presence was missed on All I Need and You Make It Easy but Air employed dubbed-out samples of her voice and their own backing vocals to impressive effect. The stage set up was brilliant too, with the group playing in a large rectangular structure on which various digital backdrops are projected.

So, yes, the gig was fantastic. And yet there came a moment, about six songs in, when I started to miss the spine-tingling gig excitement of not knowing what was coming next, of wondering what the band had up their sleeve right now, of the wonderful possibility of improvisation.

Is that fair? Probably not. And Air did play a sparkling selection of non-Moon Safari songs in the encore. But who said life - and specifically gig goers - was fair?

Charisma will take you far 

Basque musician Verde Prato had the simplest stage presence I had seen in years at her Sónar gig: just herself, a mic, one synth and a couple of lights. It could potentially have been a disaster: many of the acts playing the Complex+D stage had elaborate stage set ups, like Aïsha Devi’s billowing flags, which actually earned a joint billing for designer Emmanuel Biard, and without this, Complex+D stage looked very much like the basic conference theatre it is.

But this minimal design actually went well with Verde Prato’s uncomplicated and rather 80s Gothic pop, where simple synth lines meet wonderfully catchy vocals. (I thoroughly recommend her Erromantizismoa EP with Bronquio.) And she kept the crowd entirely on side thanks to an abundance of presence, her simple but arresting movements full of drama and suspense. Vince Staples made a similar point later at Sónar by Night. He appeared on stage utterly alone - a ballsy move for a headlining act - but glided through on pure charisma.

Natural Wonder Beauty Concept could be the Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood of electronic music

Natural Wonder Beauty Concept - aka Ana Roxanne and DJ Python - typically pair Roxanne’s vocals with bubbling electronics that find a blissed-out midpoint between their two, very different production styles. What I wasn’t expecting was for Python to contribute a vocal early on in their Sónar gig, as the duo pulled off an entirely charming duet, his gruff, expressive voice the perfect counterpoint to Roxanne’s sweet, slightly, detached tone. The role of the Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood for the post-IDM era is theirs for the taking if they want it. (Although they could do with a few stronger melodies should they take up the mantle.)

The avant-garde can come in surprisingly relaxing forms

Laurel Halo’s Sónar show, in which she was accompanied by cellist Leila Bordreuil, was one of the most downright pleasant things I have heard in a long while. But that doesn’t mean it was boring or unadventurous: Halo produced tumbling waves of detuned piano that Bordreuil matched with elegant cello lines, in a way that proved so totally immersive and enjoyable that it left me feeling dumbfounded, full of the same profound relaxation that two hours in a sauna can provide.

Catalan newcomer Adelaida, who was presenting her new album Muérdago at Sónar, was similarly lush, her music mixing soundscapes, drama and pop melodies in a way that reminded me both of Kate Bush - perhaps to be expected - and a rogue The Last Dinner Party solo offshoot. There was something witchy, supernatural and animalistic about Adelaida’s live set - it felt entirely fitting that she sampled the purring of her cat, for example - and she enchanted the Sónar crowd despite the early hour.

Electronic music can still blow minds

Sónar, at its best, walks the line between the dance music mainstream and the utterly weird and the wonderful. It’s not quite a 50/50 mix but tickle the festival’s underbelly and something like Team Rolfes present ‘321Rule’ will soon pop out. The best way I can describe this bizarre, brilliant show is as a kind of AV space opera in which cult rapper Lil Mariko stars, a slightly ropey plot about someone being banished from the internet pulling together a mixture of song, digital animation, live acting, parody and humour, all of it EXTREMELY online.

Even more head-spinning was PHYSIS, ASIANDOPEBOYS’ six-hour takeover of Stage+D on the Saturday. Behind the event - and it really was an event - was Chen Tianzhuo a Chinese contemporary artist known for outlandish performance art. But PHYSIS felt more about the collective, the eight or nine performers who battered the crown with a preposterous display of music, theatre, dance, digital art and performance.

The first time I enter their stage, a naked man is wandering about delivering drinks as a band delivers a one-note thrash cacophony, a dancer writhes on the floor, Iggy Pop-style, and parents are sent running to the exit, their children hastily born aloft. When I return, 30 minutes later, someone is MCing over what sounds like a Tibetan drum orchestra, while shooting lasers out of their fingers. One hour after that, as I make my goodbyes, the whole ensemble is on stage, leading the crowd in a raucous singalong to Four Non Blondes’ What’s Up?

I slink off a happier man, delighted that an electronic music event still has the power to shock, delight, surprise and simply blow minds.

Some listening

MJ Cole - Lay It on the Line

A lot of my favourite electronic music songs were made my producers who wouldn’t know a chromatic scale if it tried to got back to back with them at Fabric. MJ Cole is very much not one of them, his excellent skill as a classically trained musician shining through on many of his songs. Lay It on the Line is the latest of these, full of deliciously sensuous piano playing, a beat so slinky it threatens to pounce down the stairs to the delight of your children.The song is almost chill-out Garage, if such a thing didn’t sound so entirely awful.

Adelaida - Las Flores no Saben Qué Decirse

As mentioned above, Adelaida’s Sónar set was a spooky pop delight, more Halloween than mid June. Las Flores no Saben Qué Decirse (“Flowers Don't Know What to Say to Each Other”), the first song to be taken from her forthcoming album Muérdago, shows exactly what this talented Catalan producer / singer / artist is about, the song’s eccentric edges being held firmly in place by a delightful vocal melody, a little like Marina Herlop (another excellent Catalan producer) on a slightly more pop day.

Olof Dreijer and Diva Cruz - Brujas

Another Sónar delight: Olof Dreijer and Diva Cruz And after the seeing the duo perform their live / DJ hybrid show I was delighted to see that they have also announced a new EP: Brujas. The title tack of that EP is available now, offering the perfect midpoint between Dreijer’s oceanic synth wobble and Cruz’s fierce percussion skills, as well as Cruz’s first vocal, which feels a little like the funkiest war chant you will ever hear.

Xylitol - Okko

I’ve been flying the flag AND lighting a candle for Xylitol, a new Planet Mu signing whose Anemones album is a really satisfying piece of work, where prog synths meet savage jungle drums, like Mike Oldfield down Rage. Which sounds terrible, I know, but somehow ends up radiant. Okko is her new single and has all of the album’s best traits.

Burial - Phoneglow

Burial returns in classical 2-step-scratch mode on Phoneglow and brings one of his most ethereally beautiful melodies with him. Even with numerous beat switches and rhythm drop outs, Phoneglow is one of the smoothest Burial tunes in a long while, the kind of Burial you could take home to meet your parents. Perhaps inspired by his protege, Kode9’s Eyes Go Blank, on the other side of Phoneglow, is his most simply inviting record in a while, a surprisingly poppy jungle / footwork combination with a wicked hoover riff periodically making its presence known.

Things I’ve done

From topping the 90s charts to ‘very controlled and predictable’ today: is the remix dead?

I loved writing this piece for The Guardian about why we don’t really get the transformative remixes today that used to often send weird songs up the chart in the 1990s. (Ah the 90s…) At time of writing, no one in the comments has called me an idiot yet but I am sure it is coming. And, no, remixes aren’t dead - but when was the last time one made a real breakthrough?

The playlists

If, as journalist Joshua Fer once pondered, monotony collapses time, while novelty unfolds it, then you need some new music. Luckily, I have you covered. My newest and the bestest playlist on Spotify has all the best new music from the last three years; my newest and the bestest 2024 playlist has the same, but from this year. Take that, monotony.