MUSIC: The Barcelona Spring festivals are coming!

The twelfth edition of the Sonar festival will be held on 15th, 16th and 17th of June 2006 in Barcelona. Those will be three days and three nights in touch with the most up-to-date music developments and featuring relevant Spanish and international artists. Sónar will be presenting over 300 activities including DJ sets, concerts, films projected at the SonarCinema and works in every multimedia format: installations, Net art, design, etc. Sónar aims to be an essential meeting point for an alert public, cutting-edge and avant-garde artists and the most influential professionals from the sectors of music and modern arts.

Sonar by day presents Concerts, DJ sets, a professional fair, a multimedia area, audio-visual projections in all formats, a mediatheque, conferences and exhibitions. Nights at Sónar are of a distinctive nature, an enormous cosmopolitan celebration, similar to other European music events but with a Mediterranean flair, giving it a unique atmosphere. Each night DJs, VDJs perform concerts from the broadest spectrum of dance music simultaneously in 4 areas, occupying an area of more than 10,000 meters, divided between covered and open-air spaces.

Sonar will stage some well known and other less-known names from the world of electronic music, such as Jimmy Edgar, Jeff Mills, Ángel Molina, Goldfrapp, Miss Kittin, Modeselektor, Agoria, Wagon Cookin´, Hot Chip, Dave Clarke, Disco D, The Infadels, Isolée, Richie Hawtin vs Ricardo Villalobos, Tiga, Gilles Peterson, Laurent Garnier & Bugge Wesseltoft and Herbert among others.

The prices are not cheap… the General Pass for the 3 Days + 2 Nights of the festival costs 130€ while the Day Ticket is 25 € and a Night Ticket 40 €.

But Barcelona never stops, never sleeps... In the meantime, the Estrella Damm Primavera Sound festival will take place from June 1 to 3. This year's edition changes location from the Pueblo Español in Montjuic to the previous location of the Forum of the Cultures of 2004, at the end of Diagonal avenue - see website for details.

This year's edition will include musicians, DJs and groups like 2 Many Dj's, Ellen Allien & Apparat, Lou Reed (yes!), M.A.N.D.Y., Erol Alkan, Stuart A. Staples, The Flaming Lips, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, José González, Killing Joke and the spanish cult group La Buena Vida, among others.

Tickets are also not cheap, a three-day tickets 115 € while day tickets for Thursday 1st of June are 40 € and 65 € for Friday 2nd and saturday 3rd. You also have the chance to listen to all the artists and news from the Primavera Sound festival on the alternative radio from Barcelona ScannerFM, monday to fridays at 17:00.

So what are you waiting for? Check out your local low cost companies (Vueling, Virgin, Ryanair, etc) and book your flights to Barcelona... the place to be... and not only for its music festivals!