Staged amid the crown jewels of European structure and tradition, Primavera Sound routinely provides a monster pageant lineup to the lengthy record of causes to throw all of it in for every week in Barcelona. Right here, we spotlight some hidden treasures to be discovered beneath headliners Pulp, SZA, and Lana Del Rey, together with restorative jazz, apocalyptic folks, and dystopian membership bacchanals. Plus, we pay tribute to the pageant’s de facto home band, Shellac, who had been scheduled to return earlier than the demise of frontman Steve Albini.
Primavera Sound Barcelona begins Wednesday, Might 29, and stretches via to Sunday, June 2, on the metropolis’s Parc del Fòrum.
Aya (Thursday, Might 30)
Laced with late-night poetry scrawled in her iPhone’s Notes app, Aya’s skewed membership music doubles as a snapshot of her life, and her DJ units do one thing related; mic in hand, she would possibly regale audiences with off-the-cuff interjections and stream-of-consciousness monologues whereas dropping heater after heater from membership music’s most visionary fringes. Her method is as radical as her picks, mixing glowering drones and pulverized breakbeats with artists like SOPHIE, Autechre, 3Phaz, and Present Me the Physique—in addition to, if we’re fortunate, her personal cowl of the Remedy’s “Lovesong.”
–Philip Sherburne
billy woods (Thursday, Might 30)
New York rapper billy woods has no scarcity of fabric from which to decide on when he takes the stage in Catalonia. Lately, he’s launched collaborations with producer Kenny Segal (Maps), Armand Hammer bandmate Elucid (We Purchase Diabetic Check Strips), DJ Preservation (Aethiopes), the Alchemist (Haram), and Moor Mom (Brass), in addition to the solo standout Church. The Backwoodz Studioz founder has a commanding stage presence, barking his righteous phrases proudly to rapt crowds.
–Matthew Strauss
William Basinski: The Disintegration Loops (Thursday, Might 30)
Like many nice Mediterranean festivals, ideas of Primavera Sound conjure photographs of tank-topped crowds downing chilly drinks beneath the unforgiving solar, and sea breezes cooling drained our bodies reducing shapes within the wee hours. Not a lot, nevertheless, a somber ambient masterpiece like The Disintegration Loops, an ode to decay and, by extension, mortality, that the artist composed on September 11, 2001, watching smoke rise from the Twin Towers. However that totemic piece is what William Basinski can be enjoying for the viewers within the shelter of Parc del Fòrum’s auditorium, providing a uncommon probability for reflection—and, certain, possibly even a little bit of slumped-in-the-seats shuteye—amid the hedonistic crush.
