On Friday 16th June we headed over to Barcelona for one of the biggest weekend’s in the annual clubbing calendar – Sónar Barcelona. Myself flying flom Liverpool, and Mark meeting me at Barcelona airport from his short flight from Ibiza. We managed to phone, whatsapp, text and facetime our way to meeting each other upon arrival – which must be one of the biggest airports in Europe with many different terminals.

‘Music, Creativity and Technology’ is the tag line for this conference/festival which is set in two different massive complex’s across the city – firstly a vast array of daytime talks, activities and music at Sónar By Day at Fira Montjuic, followed by parties at Sónar By Night at Fira Gran Via.

We were in town for Sónar By Night only this year, and so on Saturday, which was a beautiful day in Barcelona, we strolled to the box office to pick up our press tickets for the night ahead. What started as a stroll turned into google maps sending us in various different directions and after exploring Barcelona by foot (and walking a good 20km), we picked our tickets up. After a burger (anyone visiting Barcelona should visit Bacoa – they’re the best burgers we’ve had anywhere!) and a disco snooze, we set our alarms and headed to Sónar at around 3am Saturday night/Sunday morning.

Upon arrival in the massive space (think a big warehouse with 2 indoor spaces and 2 outdoor), we checked out the Sónar Car, a large red circular room in the complex where Seth Troxler was playing b2b with Tiga for 6 hours. Over in the Sónar Club Heidi was playing, and earlier Justice had performed a live set.

Headlining the festival was Eric Prydz at 4am in the Sónar Club. We’ve been a big fan of Prydz here at Uneek Ibiza and seen him perform on many occasions over the years, from Ibiza, to Creamfields in the UK, and Miami during music Week, but to see him headlining Sónar, one of the biggest and best electronic music festivals in the world, was something special.

He played a tough tech set, with lots of beautiful melodies, and switched in between his Cirez D persona throughout too. Playing tracks such as; Cristoph – Feel, Nodek – Denso, Depayk Solo – Geheimtipp 02-b, Hans Berg – Polar and the legendary Cirez – On Off had the crowd going wild. There were green lasers a many as he ended his set on his massive track Opus (Four Tet remix), check the video below!

https://twitter.com/uneekibiza/status/876283347319877633

This was Sónar’s biggest year yet with the highest attendance in the festival’s history – 123,000 (By day – 61,000 and By Night 62,000), offering 140 musical performances distributed across nine stages (5 at Sónar by Day and 4 at Sónar by Night). The next Sónar events around the world are: Buenos Aires (November 26), Bogotá (December 2), Reykjavík (March 16 and 17), Hong Kong (March 17) and Istanbul (March 30 and 31).

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