Review: A Taste Of Sonar @ The Roundhouse

By Londonist Last edited 178 months ago
Review: A Taste Of Sonar @ The Roundhouse

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Apart from a striking difference in climate - balmy, sun-drenched Barcelona compared to a chilly, drizzly evening in the not-overly-exotic Chalk Farm - the Taste of Sonar event at the Roundhouse provided an excellent preview to the offers of the renowned electronic music festival.

The main event was the 'Wizard' himself - Jeff Mills - who played a 1.5 hour set of intensely minimal techno. The only let-down were the visuals which did not have the clarity of the amazing ones to be found at Sonar itself. After that we caught a few minutes of Internet2 in the FreeDM Studio, which involved a pointy-shoed man dancing around on pads on the floor that had been wired up to a looping device. It was interesting, if not necessarily musically-inspiring, but definitely a good example of the more leftfield offerings of Sonar by Day.

After this short diversion it was back to the Main Space for Plaid’s DJ set who played a full hour of electronica, mainly the kind you bob around to as opposed to the wild arms-in-the-air type, but ended with some techno that had virtually everyone in the room jumping.

The rest of the evening included Mary-Ann Hobbs (aka the ‘Godmother of Dub-Step’), Moderat (a collaboration between Apparat, Modeselektor and Pfadfinderei on the bPitch label) playing a storming AV glitchy electronica set (also playing at July’s Glade Festival), and finally Erol Alkan’s Disco 3000 - an exploration of disco’s past, present and future.

A final note: The Roundhouse also serves pie and mash. Yes, that’s right. Techno and pie. How could that ever be wrong?

Words and picture by Zoe Jankel

Last Updated 17 May 2009