The festival of advanced music. That is how Sónar has always been known as, no matter how much people are determined to believe that advanced music only means electronic music. But they’re not the same thing: the Barcelona-based festival has always meant to capture the music from the future before anyone else and for some time it coincided that the music from the future was electronic, which is why nobody doubted that this would become the true protagonist of the event. But times change. And the future does too.
10 SOUNDBITES FROM THE FUTURE THAT YOU CANNOT MISS FROM SÓNAR 2019
Sónar 2019 is just around the corner and it is packed full of proposals that are true bites of the future of music. In order not to get lost in the jungle that is the festival’s exuberant programme, we’re spilling on the ten most indispensable performances that you should see if you want to get a glimpse of what the future of music is going to sound like.
In fact, what’s changing each time at an even more dazzling speed is precisely the future. Nowadays, to try and chase after what we’ll be listening in a while, you need to have not only a great vision but an extremely in-tuned intuition. And, if we look into Sónar’s 2019 line-up, which will take place in Barcelona from July 18 to 20, we need to recognise that here we have vision and intuition to spare. For this reason, and also for being able to say after closing the festival that you’ve seen everyone you wanted to see, we’re about to talk about ten artists from the line-up who each one is a soundbite from the future. And everyone has their own flavour.
FAKA. Fela Gucci and Desire Marea are not your typical hipster duo. And, on top of having an impressive music proposal, what they do is a true performance on multiple levels that unfold one of the most complex and uplifting LGBTQI discourses of recent times.
JARREAU VANDAL. He’s not only one of the best artists from Soulection’s exquisite selection. He’s far from just that. Jarreau Vandal is a true musical blend that focuses on blending styles, genres and sounds at lighting speed. It’s very impressive.
K Á R Y N N. K Á R Y N N may have been living in Los Angeles for the past ten years, but her music is nourished from the exodus that distanced her from her native Syria and that feeds from the exotic and fascinating compositions of her exceptional début album The Quanta Series. They say that Björk and Marina Abramovic are already fans of K Á R Y N N. And they have their reasons to be.
LA DIABLA. Reggaeton is the music from the future. In fact, there’s no music with a greater future than reggaeton. And that’s something that La Diabla clearly already knows and he’s been practising it for a few seasons now in his impeccable sessions. Come on, don’t resist it, you know you want it.
MALL GRAB. The millennial generation is already beginning to have their own DJ heroes. And, among them, it’s pretty clear that Australian native Mall Grab shines with a particularly eloquent glow and that’s because he’s not set on any specific genres, he only wants you to dance the night away.
MASEGO. Born in Jamaica, raised in a Christian community in Virginia (USA)… Is that an impossible mix? Not for Masego, who has been able to redirect that contradiction in his biography in the creation of a musical genre which he has baptised as traphousejazz. You have to listen to it to understand it.
OCTAVIAN. Hip-hop and grime. This particular mixture of genres might sound more like the past than the future. But it could also be that the mixture of countries in Octavian’s passport (the UK and France) might be guilty of making this outdated formula sound like something purely from the future, thanks to the small dosages of trap.
SEVDALIZA. Sevdaliza was, without a doubt, one of the most unexpected stars from the past Sónar 2016. And that’s exactly why there’s so much expectation on her next visit to present The Great Hope Design, a performance which nobody knows much about but is sure to be nothing less than striking, judging from everything that comes out of that woman’s mind.
$KYHOOK. Rels B, Sticky M.A., Pedro Ladroga… They’ve all gone through $kyhook’s mixing board. But we need to reclaim that this man has so much creativity which he not only shares with others but he also saves a little bit of it to invest in some of his own productions that are opening the frontiers of urban music in our country.
VIRGEN MARIA. Forget about María Forqué: Virgen Maria is Virgen Maria. On her own terms. On the highest level. And, above all, with a hypnotic proposal in which the most uneasy (and sometimes even uncomfortable) sounds serve as a way to extol a very necessary discourse on the body and sexuality.
