Summer & sun combined with music & beach - all this is Barcelona's Primavera Sound Festival which is taking place from June 1^st until June 5^th this year! From the very beginning the concept of Primavera has been bringing together the latest indie and electronic music trends and mixes them up with bigger and already well established artists/bands. The White Stripes, Arcade Fire, Pulp, James Blake, Sonic Youth, Portishead - to name only some of them: they all have been part of former successful Primavera Editions. The festival makers have proven sure instinct in all these years; there has always been an excellent mixture of pop, rock and electro, and so it might be no coincidence that Primavera has developed to one of the biggest and most important indie music festivals on earth.

Sold-out Primavera celebrates its 16^th edition this year with headliners Radiohead, Sigur Rós, Tame Impala, LCD Soundsystem and PJ Harvey. Fans of electronic music can freak out to the sounds of Moderat and Air, Film-Score-legend and "Halloween"-director John Carpenter will enter one of the stages (hopefully in company of his brilliant orchestra!) and Beach Boys-Mastermind Brian Wilson will perform "Pet Sounds" which is according to the Rolling Stone Magazine one of the "500 greatest albums of all time".  Last year the godmother of punk Patti Smith was performing her first album "Horses" at Primavera. And it was - without doubt - one of the festival highlights!

Beside this there will be dozens of newcomers presenting a vivid, young, sassy music mix to an international audience. The whole city will be in Primavera mood, having stages and pre-concerts all over the place celebrating music at Parc del Fòrum located at the glittering Mediterranean coast.

Headliner Radiohead just released their latest studio album "A moon shaped Pool" at May, 8^th as a download first that will be followed by the physical album on June, 17^th. Radiohead always trying to approach things differently marketed the release by previously deleting all their online content on Facebook, Twitter and their website which showed only a blank page. "A moon shaped Pool" is interpreted of being full of Thom Yorke´s recent 25-year-relationship break up and earns more than ever the attributes of being theatric, brooding, fragile and not easily accessible on the first spot.

There are some changes in the line-up: Instead of Loop who had to cancel their concert, the Canadian rock band Suuns will be there, instead of Grupo de Expertos Solynieve Sr. Chinarro will take over. Bardo Pond is replaced by White Fence who now will play two shows at Primavera.

Some smaller bands that are worthwhile seeing are Unsane, Viva Belgrado, CARLA, Wind Atlas, Holograma and Bearoid - and there will be a few newcomer bands that will for sure leave an impression.

Download the Primavera app and Spotify soundtrack, pimp your Spanish and get ready for a weekend of summer, sun, music and beach!

 

Nina Bayne, Gerhard M. Vogl