22 August 2013 (gig)
22 August 2013
Sonus Day 1
It was the site of biblically-hyped Hideout Festival just over a month ago, but now Music News returns to Croatian clubbing Supernova Novalja for an altogether different beast. Sonus Festival.
NOTE: Owing to a staggering turn of events involving a broken bedframe, an insomniac Chinese girl, a delayed bus and the outdoor air temperature, last night's photos were taken on a smart phone. We will return to our SLR OCD festival documentation from this evening.
First impressions are deadly. Just ask anyone who enjoyed that banterous final round interview for a sales role. However, at midnight, stepping onto the purple-light drenched sand of the playground that is Zrce beach, you couldn't fail to be hit by the vibe of this place: Sonus Festival exudes mellow. Not the slightly self-conscious escapism of some 'laid back' festivals, but a straight up air of professional nightlife. The lights, the sound, the bars are slick without being showy, and the music is unaplogetically straight up, driving tech house: last night dominated by Nick Curly Chris Liebing at primary venue Papaya. The crowd meanwhile, are a mixture of some 4000 leggy Italians, affluent East Europeans, focussed-on-fun Germans and a few Lost Brits: a group of whom Music News runs into beach bar Noa at the end of the shore. Strobes on the sea, mainstream house playing (Noa's not part of Sonus, incidentally) and conversation peppered by the screams of people now wishing mid-air they hadn't bungee jumped toward the sea in the pitch dark. What do they make of Sonus? "It's like an amazing secret. There are hardly any Brits here!"
4am and Chris Liebing's epic set shows no sign of slowing down. Sunrise starts making its way up over the beach and gradually the mostly-Italian dominated dancefloor makes its way onto crammed, disarmingly relaxed buses back to Novalja, ready for the Boat Parties, for Seth Troxler, for Villalobos and Sneak over the next few days.
Off to a flying start.
