The Blessings


Speaking of Moodymann, I managed to siesta through his and Space Dimension Controller’s sets at Saturday’s Sonar by Day. Whoops. Got down there in time for Lunice, who I’d never seen live before and it turns out is a total star. He played a set of hip-hop edits (I presume mostly his own, but there was also a recent one from fellow Canadian Hovatron) off Ableton, and like FlyLo, had the visual side down pat, wilding out from behind his laptop and jumping into the crowd to dance. If a Brit did it they’d probably look like a twat, but Lunice came across as a total showman and completely loveable. David Banner, Beyonce, Soulja Boy and more featured on a set bound together by total neck-breaking, clinical snap.

Numbers’ Jackmaster then closed the Red Bull Music Academy stage with a 90 minute set that featured Prince, Aphex Twin, MMM, Dizzee, Mr. Oizo, Lil Silva, French Fries and everything in between. You probably don’t need me to tell you that he’s a very, very good DJ and always worth seeing, but if you do – well, he is. As with Braiden, it’s hard for any DJ who mixes in a fast UK style to keep you dancing for 90 minutes, but those two manage it.

This really was the Sonar of Glasgow. Not only was half of Barcelona covered in Numbers and LuckyMe stickers, but the latter provided Saturday Sonar by Night’s highlight with a three hour label showcase. Before them came Fuck Buttons, who’ve made some good songs (‘Sweet Love for Planet Earth’) but didn’t impress me live. I don’t know whether it was their fault or the sound engineer’s, but their long passages of noise sounded really muddy, and when they brought in live percussion it was barely audible. Poor sound or not, their live approach reminded me of the period about a third of the way through the last decade when every post-rock band started to use the same old methods to build up tension and release it – it just seemed like the same cheap trick over and over again to get a crowd reaction.




LuckyMe’s stage took the form of four 30 minute live sets from New York’s Machinedrum, Lunice (filling in for Mike Slott), American Men and The Blessings, then a DJ set by Eclair Fifi and John Computer, whose identity was pretty obvious for those in attendance, but I won’t say it here. American Men were fun, and I like the fact that LuckyMe are trying to apply their hyper-coloured, shimmering aesthetic to quite a tired format in instrumental post-rock, but I’m not sure they’re quite there as a band yet. They’ll hopefully get better with time.

Machinedrum played a very focused set that at times reached an incredible balance between Autechre-esque electronica, neck-snapping hip-hop and Baltimore club, while Lunice did pretty much the same thing as he did at Sonar by Day but to more people – which is fine – before staying on to MC with Olivier Daysoul, drag people from backstage for dance routines and all sorts. Like I said, total showman. Other highlights came courtesy of The Blessings playing Drake’s ‘Miss Me’ and Eclair Fifi dropping the Dials edit of ‘Hyph Mngo’ that I always secretly want to hear when I hear the intro to the original creep in during a Joy Orbison set. I probably should have seen more elsewhere, but bar three songs from Dizzee and some dodgy fidget house during round two of the Dodgems, I didn’t.

Last things last, the off-Sonar parties that make up as much a part of the weekend as the festival itself. Resident Advisor’s pool party was fun, more due to the fact it’s a pool party on the rooftop of the beautiful Hotel Diagonal than any music I saw (I did manage to miss Michael Mayer’s set though, so there you go). The Plat du Jour / Hyperdub / FACT party was brilliant, with Flying Lotus and The Bug making surprise appearances, and Ikonika in particular playing a stormer, dropping classic grime and edits of Aaliyah and The-Dream in among the blood red dancefloor missiles that are her own productions.

Finally, Glasgow and London came together on a really special joint party at Razzmatazz by Numbers and Elijah and Skilliam’s Butters label, which was the perfect way to close the long weekend and say goodbye to the city and all the old and new friends we met there. Guess I’ll see you next year.




Tom Lea
Photography by Georgina Cook

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