[i]The musical geographies mapped out by electronic culture are becoming more and more complete - as was shown at the recent ninth edition of the sónar festival in Barcelona[/i]

From a small media-art festival with a strong local flavour to a global import-export company: when sónar - the »Barcelona International Festival of Advanced Music and Multimedia Arts« - first took place, its scope and budget were still so modest that a one-off catalogue of around thirty pages was all that could be published. In the festival's ninth year, the catalogue expanded to over 160 pages of close print, there were performances on six stages simultaneously during the day and on three at night, and the supporting programme featured several exhibitions, symposiums and expositions. For instance, in the MACBA alone - whose facilities hosted a part of the daytime programme -, there were two thematically related exhibitions about video culture and electronic culture (»Sonic Process« and »Buen rollo - Políticas de resistencia y culturas musicales«). The expansion of the festival in all directions has now reached the stage where Barcelona's city administration sees the event as an almost unbeatable model for success. Electronica as an economy-boosting locational factor? Why not?

However, sónar's steady growth and »deterritorialisation« movement mirror a cartographic idea that is bringing more and more previously »blank zones« of global musical geography to our attention. Like every aspiration to carry out a »world survey,« this contains both an imperial and a democratic gesture, which are, in all probability, indissolubly entwined. »Imperial,« because the long world tour, full of discoveries, always begins and ends at a very specific place - the defining power of a (new) centre. »Democratic,« because these previously »blank areas« are, in the process, increasingly opened up not only for one-sided transfers, but also for mutual exchange. In the context of electronic culture, »globality« predominantly functions in such a way that the different temporalities (being in front or behind) of so-called peripheries do not follow a central temporal dictate; instead, these temporalities merge and flow with those of the »old« pop-cultural centres, with the ensuing cartographies ceasing to follow any ordered dimensionality (top/bottom, western/non-western, hot/cold, etc.). Or they form an increasingly »complete« continuum of frequencies, one that can be endlessly modulated.

So this year it was specific »fringe zones« (which they have long since ceased to be) that filled the central segments of the spectrum at sónar. For example, the Argentinean »Buenos Aliens« Audioperú and Fanstasías Animadas, who presented their surreal-like acid-ambient mixtures with their wonted laconism; the Venezualan musicians' collective Babylon Motorhome, which played its daring Latin dub using an unconventional group of (brass) instruments; or the Mexican Murcof (he also belongs to the Nortec scene in Tijuana under the name Terrestre), who had tuned his laptop to a pitch of chamber-music-like gravity, without ever losing hold on an earthy foundation of bass and rhythm. Not to forget the U.S. West Coast, which until recently tended to be a »developing country« as far as electronica was concerned; it celebrated its growing power, partly punk/vitalistic, partly sensitive/sophisticated, with label presentations by Tigerbeat6 and Plug Research.

At the other end of the cartographic spectrum, there were mostly Japanese contributions to be heard, like Hiroshi Watanabe (aka Kaito) and the label Progressive Form, which have all established their »sonic base« somewhere between Berlin and Cologne, with a decisive detour via urban Tokyoite raspiness. Nika Machaidze from Georgia presented himself as off-beat and worldly-wise in equal measure. Under the name Nikakoi, he blended serenely folkloristic elements into heavily accentuated, complex rhythms, and vice-versa. Even the gruffness of his »neighbour« from Moscow, Alexei Shulgin, with a 386 DX cover version programme, was not a convincing match for him.

Africa was still absent in this electronic global survey of music. But perhaps that will change next year, when the world-trade company sónar celebrates its tenth anniversary and will probably have reconnoitred even the last remaining blank areas.

 

Translated by Tim Jones

 

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