Last month Peter Margasak posted about the imminent Chicago debut of the Sonar Festival, which has been showcasing electronic and experimental music in Barcelona since 1994 and in 2009 organized small events in New York and D.C. The Chicago installment of Sonar will be at Pritzker Pavilion from September 9-11, and though the full lineup hasn’t been released yet, several acts were just announced, including Kid Koala’s project the Slew, German proto-glitch artist Oval, stony beat maker Nosaj Thing, and a selection of Catalonians to add authentic Barcelona flavor. Sonar will overlap with the Empty Bottle’s annual Adventures in Modern Music festival, booked in collaboration with British music mag the Wire, which this year will feature the Rhys Chatham Trio, Sleep, and Efterklang, among others. Sonar will also present a selection of music-related films under the banner SonarCinema.
The combination of highbrow music and the relaxed vibe of Pritzker Pavilion shows has a lot of potential. I’m also really hoping to see a few MGMT bros show up for brews and techno vibes only to encounter some sort of aggressively fucked-up experimental music made by intense Scandinavians. Admission to Sonar will be free, but I’d actually pay to see that shit.