Almost a two weeks on from the end of our Iberian campaign, we’re reflecting on all we saw across the both the festival’s Barcelona and Porto editions, looking at our favourite sets, and idosyncrasies from the festivals.
Barcelona
Situated in Catalunia is the original edition of Primavera Sound, which suitably reflects the strong infrastructure of Barcelona itself – whilst the brilliant Phoenix kick off the festival on the Amazon Music stage on Wednesday, the map opens up come Thursday, where you can see the true scale of the festival. The two main stages actually sit a small walk from Amazon Music, where they lie shoulder to shoulder with eachother. What initially seems like a strange set-up works perfectly – you can stay at the main stages all day with mere five minute breaks between acts. It also allows you to situate yourself where you want for say, Pulp, whilst you get to enjoy Vampire Weekend with a strong view. Overall, the festival provides an intense Metropolitan atmosphere that we’re yet to see from a festival within the UK – running from 6pm to 6am, with DJs taking the closing two hours.
The huge lineup certainly boasted a few acts in particular. Royel Otis provided everything we expected from both their festival and city sets, giving summer anthems you’d want to soundtrack a week in Catalunia with. In terms of music discovery, Mount Kimbie came across our radar at Pull & Bear on the Friday, (or early Saturday morning), with a distinct post-punk sound that brought us right back to London venues such as MOTH Club or Brixton Windmill. From the larger acts, Troye Sivan came as a pleasant surprise, with huge crowd-pleasing pop anthems, and a drummer giving it 100%, whilst a delayed Lana still moved the audience to tears (some of us included).
Porto
Despite being one of the major cities in Portugal, Primavera Sound Porto provides the essence of a more traditional festival – in a field and slightly detached from the world. As the festival begins and ends two hours earlier than it’s Spanish twin, it doesn’t feature the intense climax of DJs come 5am. That being said, it retains a lot of the key acts from the lineup, and provides a unique atmosphere somewhere between that of a Latitude in the UK, and Primavera’s Barcelona edition – organised chaos.
Amyl and the Sniffers provided the first highlight of the festival, getting the crowd working at their pace. New song ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’ went down as well as you could hope as new material, whilst classics ‘Hertz’ and ‘Security’ were as rowdy as ever. The Last Dinner Party featured the following day, as a band in full swing – despite only releasing their debut record this year, they’re keeping their foot on the pedal, with new segues between songs and even a cover of Chris Isaak’s classic, ‘Wicked Game’. Finally, it would be unjust not to include Pulp on here somewhere – whilst they smashed both sets at Primavera Sound, they acted as the perfect closer of our fortnight in the sun… Mostly.
