The 10 Best Things We Saw at Sonar 2013

by Philip Sherburne

La Bien Querida
Sónar's concessions to the EDM masses — booking Skrillex and Major Lazer, for instance — raised plenty of eyebrows among longtime attendees of the festival, and rightfully so; their presence risked tipping Sónar's careful balance between avant-gardism and all-out rave too far into the latter category. But credit the organizers with maintaining their longstanding commitment to Spanish acts who are largely unknown to foreign ticket-holders (who constitute more than half of the festival's public). On Friday night, that meant the chance to catch the Barcelona DJs Zero, César de Melero, and Angel Molina, local heroes with an encyclopedic knowledge of dance-music history and the skill on the decks that you might expect from someone who performed at the very first Sónar, in 1993, as all three did. And on Friday afternoon, it meant getting swept away by the shimmering electronic pop of La Bien Querida, a Madrid/Barcelona-based trio who could easily triumph on the international stage, Spanish-language lyrics or no. On keyboards and electronic percussion, they turned out tightly crafted songs that contained echoes of the Jesus and Mary Chain, Blonde Redhead, Stereolab, and M83. But they also sounded heavier and swirlier than their 2012 album, Ceremonia, and they brought their set to a soaring climax of squealing feedback and oscillators run amok. Stateside promoters: Book them.