After New York I jumped on a plane to London, en route to the Sonar festival in Barcelona.
Brigid and I met up in London and were treated to a great night at the legendary Fabric nightclub. I had only been to Fabric once before, but during the day when we tested the Rane Sixty-Eight mixer at maximum level. Standing in the main room on top of the subs that are under the floor, with the angriest drum and bass pounding out the Sixty-Eight was a frighteningly good experience!
We also rolled through to Koko for the Soundcrash gig where our mates Harmonic 313, Kode 9, King Midas Sound and Alexander Nut were all playing. It was loud, it was heavy, and exceptionally good.
A couple of nights later, before we jetted to Barcelona, we also stopped by the Boiler Room, a live ustream show, broadcast every week from a London warehouse. It's becoming quite the institution and has thousands of fans worldwide. The lineups are always second to none, and the night we went we were treated to sets by Guido, Breakage, Mark Pritchard, Photek and Goldie.
The Sonar festival in Barcelona has become a bit of a pilgrimage for music fans from Europe and around the globe. Serato joined forces with our buddies at Ableton and Novation in the Sonar Pro Forum area, where we had 3 stands to demonstrate the latest and greatest in DJing and music production technologies.
There were some great technology workshops held over the 3 days of the festival, including a couple about The Bridge and also a great TWITCH demo hosted by Novation. We had some good mates stop by the stand all weekend, including Slug from Atmosphere, who were playing at the festival.
During each Sonar by Day we were treated to some pretty mind-blowing performances by some of our favourite peeps. Standouts included our kiwi buddies Electric Wire Hustle, plus Illum Sphere, Star Eyes and Cosmin TRG.
Sonar by Night is pretty mental, set in a huge multi-genre indoor venue with bumper cars, a mini-rollercoaster and some of the most amazing acts you'll see under one giant roof. Definite highlights were seeing Ms Dynamite performing with Redlight, A-Trak's Magic 8-Ball set - complete with him dressed in a suit and bow-tie in his giant A, watching Steve Aoki make the crowd go ballistic, and the Numbers label showcase.
If you ever get the chance to go to Sonar, you absolutely must. It was a great way to end my leg of the Serato tour, in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.