Sonorama 2018. Day 4

Days 1-2
Day 3

Saturday, 11th

Our last Sonorama 2018 morning started at midday with the band Repion performing on Plaza la Sal. Repion were one of these bands we decided to look at only by chance as there was no appropriate alternative at the moment. Fortunately, it turned out to be one of the best decisions as this band impressed us much. They’ve got mood, they’ve got vibe. They’ve reminded me of The Breeders (though I never had a chance to see The Breeders live) – especially when the sisters Iñesta swapped their instruments with Teresa coming in to the mic and Marina taking on drumming duties. The discovery #1 for me.

The next band to appear on Heineken stage were Los Estanques. We missed most of their performance while drinking beer on Plaza Mayor but we managed to catch two last songs of their set. Thus we found them charming enough to dive deeper into their Paisley Underground-bred music upon returning home.

Then we headed to Castilla Y Leon stage for Burrito Panza. I personally had the strong desire to see them live as they’ve got that enormous new album “El Nuevo Frente Frio” and I was guessing how they would reconstruct the sound of the album onstage. Live the band sounded more in the vein of Mercromina (albeit excluding the latter’s signature wall of post-shoegaze guitar noise). For me as a longtime fan of Albacete’s finest it was all ok. 

At the moment we were teamed up with Rafa Tuñon (leader of Paciente Cero) and his company of friends so we won ourselves a couple of beers and the good place next to the entrance of Santa Catalina building to fully enjoy what was happening around. Also I was happy to see Rafa and Joan, the co-heads of Burrito Panza’s label El Genio Equivocado, amongst those before the sunlit stage. Up to the next gig (La Bien Querida) Gloria and her friends came to the place so our company grew bigger.

In the very beginning of La Bien Querida’s show we recognized Manuel Cabezali playing bass for Ana Fernandez-Villaverde. As far as I know this was his first appearance in Sonorama since the show of his primary vehicle Havalina was abruptly switched off the power (due to technical issues or schedule constrictions) back in 2013. 

Inside our circle of friends we talked alot but amidst the talks we paid attention to the show where Ana in her yellow dress did her tiny dancing to her own songs in slightly electronic wrap-up.

We stayed there for one more timeslot waiting for Nocturnos to come out. Frankly speaking, Nocturnos didn’t sound like the band for escenario principal. Rather they sounded like the great band for a club. Nevertheless, they’ve got plenty of catchy tunes and lots of energy so their performance was one of the best for us. Somewhere around that time Rafa Tuñon walked away searching for his friends, and Glo brought us some more beer...

***

Cosmen Adelaida have peeled off their dream pop influences almost completely for this gig presenting us their post punk side only. I don't know was it their usual modus operandi as it was the 1st time I saw them live. As for ‘Joana Serrat – Nat Simons’ case being compared to La Plata they sounded way more diverse while treading the same path.

Los Punsetes were our next POI. The only motions Ariadna, the female singer of the band, did during the performance were to come onstage and to come off. The entire concert she – dressed up in the Alice in the Wonderland costume (or it was the uniform of 18th century chambermaid) – stayed absolutely immobile. But the music was highly energetic, and this difference created pretty strange effect. We stayed there until the end of their set, and then accidentally run into Coque and Pablo from Los Vengadores. We talked in the interim, and these two folks were so nice that it felt such a pity to part ways with them.

For the second time in a row I was watching the performance of Izal through the leaves of an adornment plant standing in the corner of the VIP zone. For the last 5 years Izal grew on to enter the Pantheon of the best live bands of Spain, so they gathered the crowd easily comparable to one Liam Gallagher gathered the last night. They started their gig with “Pequeña Gran Revolucion”, my favourite song of theirs, so I screamed alot and then the rest of the concert I was just standing literally in the ficus elastica tub trying to figure out what’s going on onstage. They finalized the show with the fireworks. It looked so beautiful and, eh, monumental.

We didn't dare to move away from VIP zone cos there were too many people onsite, so little changed for me for Dorian's concert. The same corner, the same ficus elastica, the same emotions, the songs that great... Just some contagious sense of yearning started to crawl somewhere inside my spine as I knew well that this would be our last show of this Sonorama.

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

Sonorama 2018. 10 ‘minimal font size’ bands whose shows you surely should attend

Some bands from the lower lines of the new Sonorama poster have apparently outgrown the minimal font size (Tulsa, Modelo De Respuesta Polar, Villanueva, etc) so please find below the short list of the bands and personalities who deserve it to an equal extent.

Disco Las Palmeras!

With the new effort “Calida” ((p)2018 Sonido Muchacho) the Galician power trio spearheaded by Diego Castro abandoned both the scratching noise of “Asfixia” and the ever-buzzing wall of sound of “Ultra” leaving the core of their songs peeled off almost completely. And I’m curious how it would sound live.

Floridablanca

The re-branded and re-named madrilenos Sin Rumbo switched to the sunshine balearic disco-pop. Despite they stepped aside quite far from what they were before, if you’re a fan of Sin Rumbo it’s time to convert yourself into a fan of Floridablanca.

Joana Serrat

The best Americana singer-songwriter the Iberian Peninsula ever gave birth to.

La Plata

While most eyes are set at their equally promising labelmates Carolina Durante you shouldn’t overlook young post punk band from Valencia. They have released this year their debut album “Desorden” that created considerable splash amongst the music press and, additionally, have found its place in my own record collection.

Pet Fennec

The Basque band that draw comparisons to such North American indie legends as Band Of Horses, Built To Spill and Nada Surf. As for me, kinda perfect reference points.

Burrito Panza

This year Burrito Panza have released “Un Nuevo Frente Frio” – by all means the best album in their career – and one of the best to-date. You shouldn’t miss the chance to watch at the band on the creative peak.

Cosmen Adelaida

They may look like The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart’s young followers but this metropolitan combo has 3 full lengths along with 2 EPs (all on El Genio Equivocado) of high quality dreampop-meets-post punk in their back catalogue. They have already experienced performances on FIB, Primavera Sound and ContemPOPranea – so this year they’re gonna tick the box at Sonorama’s name.

Nocturnos

Covering the vast specter of genres from dizzy synth groove of “Rey Absolutista” to the guitar-driven rock club singalongs of “Fantasia Liberal” Nocturnos are stylistically polymorphous and amusing in every turn. Year ago they were set to perform at Sunday that made attending their show completely impossible for me. This time I’m ready to fix this honest mistake.

Ladilla Rusa

As funny as kinky this drag queen fashioned duo is going to kick asses with their trashcan aesthetics, ‘death on the dancefloor’ electropop and quirky sense of humor (“Whitney Houston, tenemos un problema”).

Cala Vento

The Catalan duo is the only band out of my wishlist that finally made it to the festival’s line up. Unfortunately, I’m forced to leave Aranda by the Sunday morning, so there’s no chance for me to catch them. You should do it for me.