Sonar 2008 review: Raum! Open Air party

Sonar 2008 review: Raum! Open Air party

21 June, 2008 | 12.33PM

• Section: Music News Topics: Sonar 2008
• Written by: Zack Rico

On paper, the Raum! Open Air Party at Barcelona’s Velodrome looked set to be one of the best events of Sonar 2008.

With Luciano, Loco Dice, Reboot, Craig Richards, M.A.N.D.Y., DJ T, and Martin Buttrich on the line-up and Desolat, Cadenza, Monza Ibiza and Get Physical having joined forces for it, the party would surely be off the hook.

But in reality, the Raum! Open Air Party was a bitter disappointment.

So what went wrong?

For a start, the venue was located 20 minutes outside the centre of Barcelona which during Sonar week is a little too much to ask of disheveled clubbers, especially when there’s so many other great club nights happening right in the centre of town.

When Beatportal arrived, the guestlist was already ‘closed’ and the guys checking names off the list were being suspiciously obtuse.

The first sign of a half empty party is when the promoter starts cutting down the guestlist.

Once inside, our fears were confirmed as the giant Velodrome venue (which is basically a football stadium) was gaunt in its emptiness, like a lonely and hungry child from Africa.

The problem with cavernous venues is they look dead unless they’re 80 per cent full.

Then at the bar, it was disappointing to find an infuriating second-rate drink ticket system was in place.

Whoever came up with the idea of making music fans pay at the beginning of the night for drink tickets (which they’ll probably lose) is a shrewd businessman (and probably very rich, at 10 Euros a pop).

By about 2am a few more people started to show up, and Luciano and Loco Dice provided an entertaining set of minimal techno and tech house in the Cadenza/Desolat tent.

Despite the vacant wings, the gathered crowd squeezed themselves in front of the DJ booth managing to create a good atmosphere for the two underground stars.

Loco Dice and Luciano played one record after another, taking the music from Dice’s pumping techno to Luciano’s Latino-infused minimal and house.

It would have been supreme, had the tent been full.

Over the other side of the Velodrome at the Monza Ibiza/Get Physical stage, it was sadly a different story.

With only a handful of a crowd the DJs here didn’t get much chance to create a collective energy, and despite M.A.N.D.Y.’s top quality techno it was fairly uneventful.

In the end, the Raum! Open Air Party was overambitious.

With a 30 Euro entry on the door, 10 Euro drinks, a giant concrete bowl of a venue and numbers below the official 3600 capacity the night fell well below expectations.

The fact that the two stages were musically very close (Loco Dice and Luciano played at the same time as M.A.N.D.Y. for example) also didn’t help matters, splitting the crowd in two.

Had the venue been located nearer to town and the DJs played in the same arena it could have been a different story.

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