Sonorama 2018. Day 3

Days 1-2

Friday, 10th

By the morning before walking to Castilla Y Leon (Santa Catalina) stage for Nat Simons we made a brief stop at our favourite Plaza la Sal’s Heineken stage where Duque were performing at the time. The band looked a bit elder being compared to average Heineken stage residents but was alive, kicking and undeniably pleasant. 

Nat Simons’ music is quite close to that of Joana Serrat but Nat managed to perform her program with much more diversity. She interchanged fast rock and roll songs with slower ones and did a couple of cover versions as well. I never thought I would dance to a Tom Petty song one day but she made me to do so.

Then we returned to the old town of Aranda to see the way louder Basque band Kometa. We never heard a single song of them before, but it quickly became apparent that we should count +1 up to our list of discoveries.

After we took a break to have ourselves a cup of cold white wine at Plaza Mayor we came again to Santa Catalina place just in time to see Pet Fennec but the band onstage apparently was not Pet Fennec. The fast glance at Sonorama app (by the way, this year this app was really useful) – hey, that’s Jorge Marazu! Somehow the schedule was shifted pushing Jorge Marazu and Pet Fennec to perform later than it was planned initially.

Pet Fennec. This was the performance no one really attended to. Right after Jorge Marazu finalized his set the spectators started slipping away, so at the moment the band began to play there was literally no one before the stage. Only a dozen of persons were hiding their bodies into the thin strip of shadow at the far right side of the stage. We stepped into the shadow as well but quickly came off thinking: ‘What the fuck? If we are going to be the only ones to support the cool band why can’t we keep staying in the sun?” Pet Fennec were really cool. I liked their album, and their live performance made me like them even more.

Due to the aforementioned schedule shift along with our subsequent visit to a restaurant* (being invited by Javier Ajenjo) our spare time between ‘morning’ and ’night’ sections was diminished so we were late to attend the Angel Stanich gig at the main stage Ribera del Duero. However, we came in time to catch the very beginning of Luis Alberto Segura’s show.

L.A. was amazing as always. He’s got a lot of great tunes spread over his last 4 albums starting from “Heavenly Hell” (as he never plays the songs from three albums independently released prior to his breakthrough record) so he could play three hours in a row without losing the certain level of quality.

Right after L.A. covered up Nada Surf began to play on the main stage. This was the special moment for me. I was stunned as Nada Surf were my all-time favs and I could proclaim myself being a fan since I first listened to “Inside Of Love” back in 2003. I sang along and shouted out to every song with the tears in my eyes almost breaking my voice…

As the magic couldn’t have been prolonged beyond the timing of the standard festival set we were forced to find us new entertainment, and we found it in El Ultimo Vecino. I always thought El Ultimo Vecino was an one-man synth-driven project but it appeared to be the full band. Moreover, the band spearheaded by Gerard Alegre Doria behaved like if they ain’t no strangers to the indie rock vocabulary. 

Regarding La Plata, I expected more, to put it frankly. All the songs of their set explored the same sound and almost the same dynamics.

New Day have blown me away, and I went completely mad. That was pretty strange as I don’t like their debut album that much to go nuts, but onstage Amparo Llanos and her tiny band sounded ferocious. Their songs being performed live managed to express much more energy and melody. Not all of their songs were perfect but the most of them knocked me off.

* In the restaurant we were seated next table to a company of four. One of them was Eric Jimenez, the drummer of Lagartija Nick and Los Planetas. He was so friendly and gave off such great charisma that I can only admit we've never met a person like him before.

Day 4

Sonorama 2018. Days 1-2

This particular Sonorama differed much from all the previous editions we’ve been involved into. This time we made an initial decision to abandon seeing as many bands as possible. When there’s a lot of events around it’s hard to keep up fully with what’s going on so most of the time you’re running from stage to stage with the sweat on your teeth trying to catch a couple of songs here and then a couple of songs there. Now we were more about soaking our bodies and minds into the atmosphere of the festival instead. We’ve got along with more people, we spent more time simply enjoying just being the part of it. 

Wednesday, 08th

The festival started at 9:00 pm sharp with the performance of Disco Las Palmeras! It looked like shame the audience was rather sparse during their show as Diego Castro and his pals deserved much more attention. But it was only Wednesday, and the most of the young festival people didn’t arrive to Aranda at the moment, I suppose. Anyway, their new album “Calida” is one of the year’s best, so I enjoyed the new songs a lot – and poor are the ones who didn’t came.

Triangulo Inverso is one of those bands that are deemed to be popular while lacking originality. You may easily recognize the influences of Izal, Vetusta Morla, Miss Caffeina in their songs. For the festival stages such bands are the great deal cos their songs are always good enough to make the people rave and dance and fully enjoy it but at the end of the day it’s a dead end. For me it’s pretty clear you need something more to be truly original.

The next ones to step upon the stage were Correos. The Sonorama’s darlings (I’ve lost count of how many times they performed at different locations of the fest for the last 5 years) were loud and cheerful and highly energetic as always. The fact they had lost a member prior to recording of their new disc “Terapia, Terapia” didn’t impact their sound and stage behavior at all. They presented the pack of older hits along with a couple of new tracks from “Terapia, Terapia”. I should declare the new ones fitted great so the next time the crowds gonna be shouting out the lines from “El Ultimo Verso” or “Sobreviviendo” like they shouted out ”Calles llenas de gente vacia/ Y nadie sabe donde esta la salida“ or “Todo el mundo necesita un corazon salvaje” now.

Thursday, 09th

We started the first full day of Sonorama from the Floridablanca performance at Plaza la Sal (Heineken stage). Floridablanca had only a handful of songs released publicly as singles earlier this year, and their debut album is set to release for the autumn that comes. But for me they are kind of old friends as my Sonorama history was ignited by these guys. I mean, all my love and adoration of this fest started to blossom from the performance of the band named Sin Rumbo in the year 2013. Floridablanca are exactly the same guys who performed as Sin Rumbo up to the year 2017. Now they have changed direction starting to play synth-driven music with sunshine pop/balearic influences. It was quite different to what they did before but anyway entertaining. As I predicted previously, if you're a fan of Sin Rumbo it's easy to convert yourself into the fan of Floridablanca.

The next band to perform on the same stage was the young quartet Patio Rosemary. Up to their concert I was put into situation that cut short my abilities in squaring down the correct and weighted opinion on this band as we were approached by a group of our friends (hi there Glo, Eva, MariAn and company!), and during Patio Rosemary’s set we spent more time talking and embracing each other than listening to the band.

Right after Patio Rosemary came offstage we left Plaza la Sal and came to a restaurant to enjoy some lechazo. While sitting there at the table with the piece of meat in one hand and the cup of wine in another we were thrilled by the news that today’s concierto secreto (now it’s called #EspirituRibera due to DO Ribera Del Duero sponsorship) on Plaza del Trigo would be Cycle. The same Cycle our friend David Tabuena plays with! We finalized our meal quite quickly and rushed to Plaza del Trigo but this place was overcrowded as usual. Fortunately, we managed to win ourselves some free space aside of the stage so for the last 4 songs we stayed in a couple of meters from David and China Patino (David Kano, Juanjo Roig and the frontman Luke Donovan were a bit farther from us). Cycle performed mostly the tracks from their new album “Electrik” – at least in the final part of their set. Right now I look at the results of the poll “What #EspirituRibera event you consider the best” in twitter, and the Cycle’s gig is on the last place with no chance to step up. I totally disagree with that, by all means Cycle were great.

After we met David backstage we took a 2 hour break before the nighttime set of concerts in recinto ferial (main festival area).

***

The first evening show was the one of Joana Serrat. Well, I can’t call it disappointment of any kind though I can’t hide my dissatisfaction. The songs were still that great but the sound was samey song to song. It sounded like ‘ok, as we’ve got this guy on pedal steel let he play it all the way’. I don’t know... Her albums are gorgeous, there’s nothing about sameness in “Dripping Springs” or “Cross The Verge” – but live the impression was somehow spoiled for me. Anyway the show pleasant enough to feel some kind of regret when moving away halfshow from Burgos stage to Ribera stage for catching the second half of Tulsa’s gig. 

This was the 3rd time we observed Miren Iza’s band live and surely this was the most danceable show out of these three as it was based upon the material of the last year’s perfect “Centauros” - in contrary to the previous two that were post-“La Calma Chicha” gloomy yet vulnerable psych-pop ones.

The next stop was the Burgos stage again. El Increible Paso was the new name for us and we wanted just to check the band out. So we did right what we wanted to do: we checked this band out placing Hombre Esponja and his pals into the ‘to listen to their albums later’ category. As evidenced by the show they stood both legs in folk rock and probably paid some debt to Izal but they’ve got something of their own as well.

We never managed to appear at Neuman’s performances before so this time we arrived to Aranda stage beforehand to get ourselves the good places. Everyone who ever listened to his albums knows well that Paco Neuman is a guitar junkie. Who else could start his set with 12 minute long “Deleted Files” from the most recent release “Crashpad” ((p)2017 Subterfuge)! Then Paco continued to pour the waterfall of the guitar swirl onto the audience. He changed guitars after every song and used two full pedalboards of guitar effects. I think ‘astonishing’ is the proper word to describe his art.

Then we walked to the Burgos stage for the Modelo de Respuesta Polar performance that appeared to be the logical continuation of Neuman’s as the five-piece from Valencia used three guitars onstage to produce the sonic squall simultaneously vigorous and intimate. With every new album the songs of Modelo de Respuesta Polar are getting slower and mellower but live the band is still powerful and loud.

Despite the fact the shows of Neuman and Modelo were really great, the best show of the night definitely was performed by Pasajero. The Madrid-based band collected the best tracks out from their three albums for that special night. 100% hits, 100% energy, 100% pleasure.

Day 3
Day 4