Javier Ajenjo assured during the inaugural press conference that he continues “fighting to make this a different festival.” Meanwhile, La Cabra Mecánica mocked all types of acoustic protection, bursting into the room over the words of the founder and director of Sonorama Ribera. If the Aranda de Duero festival has remained strong for 29 years, it is for this very reason: music is still the most important thing.
This is how he felt during the concert pablopablothe biggest youth claim of Wednesday’s day. At the confines of the track, it gives the impression that this is not a concert made for a festival: music that is too quiet, giving rise to whispering. To get fully into the live performance, you had to get deeper into the crowd, where everything calms down while Pablo Drexler’s voice takes center stage.
This increasingly has a more rounded live performance, incorporating ethereal frikadas like the outro of ‘I always love you sometimes’, capable of taking you out of your body, or performing recent songs with tremendous grace. ‘Contigo’, in this sense, is super favored. One of those successes that make you revisit a song that perhaps didn’t completely convince you in its studio version.
This year, Sonorama is also a little more different due to the immense size of its screens. Christopher Nolan would be proud. Thus, it is difficult not to appreciate even more the way of living live Ivan Ferreirobeing able to fully appreciate each closing of the eyelids or involuntary dance movement. At the same time, the most unremarkable moments of their set, when the entire venue is not singing ‘Turnedo’ or ‘Circular Thought’, are also wonderfully enjoyed because it is like watching a movie.
The Galician artist’s staging is on the technological side, with its screen directly recalling the work ‘Installation for Bilbao’ by Jenny Holzer, recognizable as soon as you enter the Guggenheim door. Between the lines of code you can read words like “BOSÉ”, “PINBALL”, “SLEEPY” or “PIRATES”. Appropriate, since Ferreiro’s band was the total protagonist of the set, singing up to 8 songs from their repertoire. ‘The 80s’ was enjoyed for obvious reasons, but ‘I’ll miss you’ was the one that aroused the most emotions.
The concert of Leon Benavente It wasn’t that exciting, but it was overwhelming. In front of a purple background, the silhouettes of the Spanish supergroup stood out against the light, demonstrating that they had reached the peak of elegance in indie. And perhaps also that of bravery. As in their last album, ‘NUEVA SINFONÍA SOBRE EL CAOS’, the protagonist last night was the mixing console, which occupied a central place on the stage.
Immortal guitar hits like ‘Gloria’ or ‘Ser Brigada’ continue to play, always capable of making the audience hum their iconic guitar line, but Abraham Boba’s band also dedicates a large part of the set to their new electronic adventures. Their classics have aged like Ribera del Duero, but ‘LA AVENTURA’ or ‘EN EL FESTÍN’ are a great counterpoint, inspiring the most existentialist dances possible. It’s hard not to feel totally caught up in Boba’s stage presence, if you don’t get lost in his lyrics first, of course. This is a showman in ‘A LA MODA’, a percussionist in ‘Ayer Salí’ and a dancer as decadent as he is hypnotizing in… all the songs. The more years that pass, the clearer it is that León Benavente will always be a hit.
During the rest of the opening day, Sonorama continued to be different. It was with the massive party of The Stickercapable of moving the masses at will and emptying the venue after their show, and with the rocking throwback of The Molotovssomewhere between Oasis and early The Kinks.
