Festival Season Forever! - Sónar Reykjavík is back! We talked to them!

Sónar Reykjavík is back! We talked to them!

After reading about all the SAD and darkness in this issue, are you now dreading the dark and icy stretch of February? Well don’t shit yourself quite yet, friend, because the Sónar festival has fixed that for you.

For the uninitiated, Sónar is an event franchise that started in the balmy climes of Barcelona back in 1994. Over the years, it’s developed a mighty reputation for unearthing new electronic music, becoming a veteran festival brand—today, Sónar has run festivals and events in over 50 international locations, from LA to Buenos Aires to Frankfurt to Tokyo. In 2015, it’ll once more swap the shades and flip flops for some warm extra layers and head to Iceland, bringing with it a choice menu of cutting-edge electronica music and all kinds of assorted cross-genre wonderment.

The three-day party, which runs February 12th-14th, is once more housed in the various rooms of the Harpa concert hall. It has proved something of a hit with hard-partying techno-tourists over the last couple of years, eventually selling out in 2014, and tickets are apparently going fast after the announcement of big names like Skrillex (pictured), TV On The Radio, Todd Terje and Jamie xx, along with a host of local talents including Ghostigital, Mugison, Samaris and Sin Fang.

GRAPEVINE IS ON BOARD

Because of all this awesomeness, Your Friends At The Grapevine signed up to be an official Sónar media partner for 2015. What does this entail? Well, we’ll be covering it a bunch. We probably would have anyway. To celebrate this, we caught up with the festival manager Björn Steinbekk for a few words about what’s going on as the festival draws near.

How is the festival coming along? What are you guys doing now in the preparations?

As we are very fortunate to have a close group of people working now on Sónar Reykjavik for the third consecutive year, and as we enjoy the support of the local music scene and our partners in developing the festival, it’s kind of business as usual. We’re making sure the artists are tended to, arranging logistics such as flights, hotels, and technical riders. We’re talking to the media people that are coming over for the festival. In essence this is the time where the promoter learns whether his preparations have been good or bad, and I think we are in a good shape for our 2015 edition.

Are there any new surprises in the works for the lineup?

The reception to the lineup has been better than we could have hoped for. We can honestly say that we can’t find a 3,300-capacity festival in Europe offering same kind of artists, in size and popularity. We are thrilled and happy on behalf of our audience.

Are there challenges in bringing the event to a comparatively small country like Iceland?

The Sónar brand has made all the difference—that, and us creating a history as Sónar Reykjavík, creates an attraction that makes most of the challenges seem insignificant. The support of Icelandair, City of Reykjavik and other of our partners has also been vital in getting the festival at the place where it is now.

Are you guys happy to be partnering with Grapevine?

It seemed like a natural thing—Grapevine does a great job in covering music and cultural activities in Iceland. We just hope we can bring something interesting to the paper and its online platform.

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Keep an eye on Sónar Reykjavík this week for more exciting news. Check out this sweet announcement, and the full lineup here.