Catalan Creativity Worldwide Primavera Pro Primavera Sound Barcelona, 31st May - 4th June 2023
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#CatalanMusic Welcome Party at Primavera Pro!! BOTIFARRADA & CATALAN SHOWCASES Galgo Lento Ven’nus Las Bajas Pasiones May 31 - 6:30 pm Pati de les Dones. CCCB
Play, discover and enjoy the music from Catalonia! Listen online the ‘Primavera Sound 2023 #CatalanMusic playlist
Primavera Sound is a “can’t miss” music festival and, on this edition, Barcelona will become again an international music capital, with over 200 performances full of emerging talent and a good example of equal gender representation on the festival bill. In this booklet we’re delighted to present the fantastic Catalan line-up. We hope it will become a useful companion for you when planning your week.
We would like to welcome you also to Primavera Pro, the global meeting point for the music industry that we’re sponsoring and invite you to meet all accredited professionals during the “Botifarrada” Primavera Pro Welcome Party, organised by the Catalan Institute for Cultural Companies and its internationalisation brand, Catalan Arts. This is a unique
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opportunity to connect, network and strengthen ties with fellow professionals, and enjoy a soundtrack by three up-andcoming Catalan artists, taking part on the 2023 line-up.
Join us on Wednesday 31st May, at 6pm, at the CCCB for some food, drinks and music! If you want more information on a particular artist or band, please don’t hesitate to contact them directly, or contact any of our offices –located in Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, London and Paris– for further assistance.
www.catalanarts.cat
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Antònim Bad Gyal
Adelaida
Cabiria Carlota Flâneur
Ciutat Desert DJ Coco
Galgo Lento Heal Heather
Joe Crepúsculo John Talabot
Julia Amor
Las Bajas Pasiones
Los Ganglios Marc Piñol
Núria Graham Rosalía Ven’nus Twin Ubaldo
Data last updated on May 2023
Adelaida
THE REASON FOR THE TIDES
At times, it’s like a Pre-Raphaelite painting emitting sound. At others, a selkie hurling its song to bounce and multiply in a fractal way against the cliffs. And when you finish listening to her debut Cántaro, you have the feeling that a sibyl has just revealed a mysterious prophecy to you. Adelaida draws on her training in choir singing to weave vocal curtains with electronic trimmings and avant-garde deconstructions. This Barcelona-born graduate in fine arts puts verses and sings (in Spanish and Catalan) to the pain of love, knowing that music also has a power that we don’t often remember: to heal us.
Contact
Adelaida Antúnez
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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PRIMAVERA PRO
Antònim
NATURAL ELECTRONICS
One fine day, Ton Llevot and Maxi Ruiz went for a walk in the woods, each one on his own. The first whistling a psychedelic tune. The second, wearing boots and stomping synthetic rhythms. They met when they reached a clearing, and there their styles became entangled, giving rise to Antònim. The duo has created a place where electronica takes root and grows among the thick foliage, creating branches that range from folk to indietronica, always with a melodic mystery in its center.
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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PRIMAVERA PRO
Contact Primavera Labels
Bad Gyal
HIT & HIT
Hit & miss? No: hit & hit. There are no slip-ups in Bad Gyal’s career. Only hits: from Pai to Fiebre. From Zorra to Sin carné. From being a pioneer in adapting the urban lexicon to Catalan to traveling (physically and musically) to Jamaica and Latin America to delve into dembow, dancehall and all the genres that Alba Farelo likes to roll and smoke with a style that is already internationally recognized. From FACT Magazine itself crowning Jacaranda as best song of 2017 to sharing label with Kendrick Lamar and Billie Eilish. From drawing the crowds in festivals on the other side of the Atlantic to filling stadiums in Spain. From setting up a sound system with its own voice to becoming, well and truly, a generational icon.
Contact Entrelineas
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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PRIMAVERA PRO
Cabiria
POP ORBIT
The music that Eva Valero invents when she becomes Cabiria is from all eras and from none at the same time. It is perfect pop orbiting in its own temporal logic, suspended between the two moons that illuminate the title of the second and latest album by the Catalan artist. And from up there she opens her parachute and decides where she will land with each chorus of instant effect: in Italian disco, Japanese city pop, French chanson or Brazilian bossa. Music, like that of Cabiria, is made to float in its own pop orbit.
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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El
PRIMAVERA PRO
Contact
Volcán Música
Carlota Flâneur
EVERYTHING IS COLOURED
Song by song, Carlota Flâneur has been losing her shyness, in every sense of the word. She has found her look, an image of exquisitely combined bright colours. And, above all, she has found her voice. The one that leads her at a carefree pace among the warm instrumentation provided by Ferran Palau’s production. The one that allows her to pull a cover of Tyler, the Creator’s See You Again out of her hat and make us believe that it is a song composed on the shores of the Mediterranean. The one that, in short, has made her our new favourite pop flâneur.
Contact Hidden Track Records
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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PRIMAVERA PRO
Ciutat
URBAN PLANNING
Jordi and Guillem. JP Sunshine and Guim. Ciutat is the result of the union of two members from Mainline Magic Orchestra and We Like Turtles. The duo draws up an urbanistic plan of melancholic house pop that just as easily comes out with a narcotised version of the bolero Sabor a mí as it embraces the Spanish guitar in Que salga el sol or allies itself with Chico Blanco to take on Techo. At first, the concept of the duo’s songs seems like a joke, but once you listen to them, it is impossible not to accompany them with your foot and unravel the helium-fuelled emotion of their poetry.
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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PRIMAVERA PRO
Contact Primavera Labels
Desert SYNTH SIGHTING
Someday someone will write the book that will list the sightings of Desert, that band that occasionally allows itself to be glimpsed just at the right time and in the right place, only to dematerialize again. That, over the course of a decade and with a minimal discography has been showing the paths that pop and electronica would take, captivating the underground here and further afield (they have released on Minty Fresh and Cascine). We have become accustomed to treasuring each of Cristina Checa and Eloi Caballé’s appearances because we never knew when or where the next glimpse would take place. With the release of their first album, Caos sota el cel, they promise that, from now on, they will be more present than ever in our lives.
Contact Primavera Labels
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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PRIMAVERA PRO
DJ Coco
MEET ME HERE
There is no Primavera Sound without DJ Coco: more than a DJ, a meeting point with legs, glasses and decks. His sessions are the ultimate catharsis to a long festival weekend, the place to find lost friends and forge new complicities based on the recognition of the pieces that make up an indie soundtrack with AOR touches to keep on believing. It doesn’t matter what you click on: you’ll know them all. Shall we meet at Coco? Yes, of course.
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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PRIMAVERA PRO
Contact Farmway Records
Lento
This Catalan composer and producer creates dreamlike sounds that glide between lo-fi and metaphysical pop, all of them born in the comfort of his bedroom. On his debut album Dies i dies, Galgo Lento perfectly captured his millennial concerns, exploring love, an uncertain future, a lost past and a present that seems fleeting. In 2023, he invites us to enjoy the new album Martinet!, a musical journey that transports us to a state of pleasant indolence. With his slow but steady style, Galgo Lento is an example of how tranquillity can be synonymous with success. A work of introspection, leading us to face those parts of ourselves that we would rather ignore; and that reminds us that sometimes, it’s best to take it easy and let the music hosts us in a warm embrace.
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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PRIMAVERA PRO
Contact Luup Records
Galgo
SLOWLY BUT SURELY
Heal
EMOTION THROUGH CREATION
Heal is a band formed in Barcelona by ex-members of Wind Atlas, North State, Wann and Glitterhouse. Different styles come together to search for their own sound and to exchange artistic interests.
Close to indie rock with echoes of slowcore and folk, Heal offers a musical proposal fthat breaks free of these labels and focuses on the emotional and creative side. Residents at the Fabra i Coats - Fàbrica de Creació, they are starting to play their first concerts at the Feedback and Seïsmes Seïsmes cycles and the first songs will come out during this year.
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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PRIMAVERA PRO
Contact Primavera Labels
Heather
Listen to Revere It or Avenge. You’ll think you’ve discovered the best British band of the eighties that nobody had told you about yet, but in fact these compositions belong to musicians from today and based in Barcelona. The time-space coordinates may have taken Heather away from what was theoretically their natural habitat, but that doesn’t matter when the language used is as universal as that of this quintet: what remains are the songs, with as much room for melody as there is for mystery. As they themselves say: remember their name.
Contact
Fanny Gornés
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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PRIMAVERA PRO
REMEMBER THEIR NAME
Joe Crepúsculo
THE DISCO SHINES
So many years trying to pigeonhole Joe Crepúsculo, and finally it has been Joël Iriarte himself who has come up with the perfect definition for himself: techno troubadour. The title of his most recent album also describes the figure and art of a musician who is as much a creator of tender, romantic and absurd stories as he is one of the fiercest beatmakers on the national scene. So, he has become the master of a dance factory that never ceases to produce relentless bangers, rhymes and legends encapsulated in hits that always have an unexpected twist to catch us.
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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El
PRIMAVERA PRO
Contact
Volcán Música
John Talabot
THE LIMITS OF TIME
John Talabot does whatever he wants with time. The ten years that have passed since his first album, ƒin, seem like an eternity, it’s true, but they have also allowed us to get to know him like no other album. In his sessions, for example, we would stay there forever and never know what tempo we are in: is this house, disco, techno? Does it matter? Here even the beats per minute are relative. And that’s why, even after having seen him tons of times at those anthological closings of Primavera Sound or at his traditional Christmas sessions at Barcelona’s Nitsa, we always leave his sets wishing they would start all over again, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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POP TO DRIVE AWAY FEARS
Against fear, pop. Against shyness, pop. Against everything that blocks us, pop. This is the recipe authorized by Júlia Coll, through her musical alter ego, Julia Amor. A project born in full confinement and that has already accumulated a good handful of electronic melodies designed as anthems with which to encourage introverts to go out on the dance floor: super strange, the end, when your voice turns red, the things that will die... Pure love.
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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PRIMAVERA PRO
Contact Primavera Labels
Julia Amor
Las Bajas Pasiones
THE PARTY YOU WANT TO BE AT
Las Bajas Pasiones is a survival project that fuses the will to live with a defiant attitude towards life. Their music is a combination of raw, direct rap, with pop melodies and catchy choruses, which intertwine with synthesizers and guitars to create beats from another world and another time. With two albums already under their belt, Las Bajas Pasiones surprise us with their latest album, Neocancaneo; an album that invites us to fool around in parks far from the city, to smile in the face of the limitations imposed by the patriarchy and to empower ourselves as human beings who love life and fight against any traces of repressive morality.
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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PRIMAVERA PRO
Contact Suricat Music
Los Ganglios
GOOD MUSIC
“Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for everything!” It was like this, from one day to the next, that Los Ganglios said goodbye in 2019. And they announced their comeback just as abruptly last spring, as if the hiatus had been just another trick in their career. In any case, they are back, waxing lyrical with their stylistic potpourri, their slang-filled lyrics that make you laugh hysterically and their slapstick songs that paint a very serious portrait of the Celtiberia Show. The black legend returns. Los Ganglios return.
Contact Contratación
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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PRIMAVERA PRO
Marc Piñol
VERSED IN CLUBBING
No one knows the Barcelona club scene better than Marc Piñol. Multifaceted professionally (he is a journalist and a designer) and in his DJ nights: he does not exclude any genre, although his heart belongs to acid and disco music. After more than 25 years making magic, most of them at Nitsa, Piñol could already be considered intergenerational and omnipresent. DJ’ing at festivals all over Europe and opening for artists such as historic Andrew Weatherall or Ivan Smagghe, one of his declared fans, what is clear is that the Catalan DJ, who in other times we knew as DJ de Mierda, always makes us enjoy with his presence.
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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PRIMAVERA PRO
Contact Marc Piñol
Núria Graham
FINDING YOURSELF SOMEWHERE ELSE
When she closed Marjorie’s family photo album, Núria Graham was left with the feeling that her singer-songwriter lineage only represented part of her. And she decided to look for herself elsewhere. There were physical and, above all, aesthetic shifts: when the songs began to come, they did so with the piano as the fundamental instrument, but with room for a bassoon, a double bass, string arrangements... From all this came Cyclamen, an album that does not negate Graham’s previous profiles, but which shows its author as she is now, with all the emotion of having discovered herself in an unexpected place.
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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PRIMAVERA PRO
Contact Primavera Labels
Rosalía
IT’S HER (HI)STORY
Rosalía is the most advanced mind in global pop and forces us to revise the story immediately: with the Catalan artist it is always impossible to foresee the magnitude of the next chapter. The collaborations with Bad Bunny, The Weeknd, Travis Scott, J Balvin and James Blake, the awards, the TV performances,... Her story is perhaps the greatest musical hyperbole of our time, but luckily it stands on the most reliable pillar imaginable: a voice like no other, from Sant Esteve Sesrovires to the world. A voice made not only to sing important things, as she demonstrated on Los Ángeles and El Mal Querer, her first two albums, but also totally fun things like Bizcochito and Despechá, two of the anthems that have underpinned her motomami era.
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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Twin IN THE FOREST CLEARING
The note that accompanies TWIN’s biography on Hidden Track Records says that “in all roads there is a turning point, a moment when everything becomes clear and concise”. It would be exactly at that crossroads where Ana López, ex-Her Little Donkey, clearly saw that her path led to a solo destination guided by electronic pop, a touch of nostalgia and chiaroscuro. On her first EP under this new alias, TWIN launches into Auto-Tune, layers of melody and deceptively sweet lyrics. There is no evil twin here, both have some light and some darkness, a part that is exposed and another that is still hidden among the branches.
Contact Hidden Track Records
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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PRIMAVERA PRO
Ubaldo
If by looking with patience and concentration at an abstract pattern suddenly made shapes appear, then listening to Andreu G. Sierra’s experimental ambient (he calls it napcore) with attention and the will to let oneself be surprised produces unheard-of revelations. This musician from Delta de l’Ebre living in Brussels is incapable of being in a solo project (he shares Ubaldo with the free jazz projects of Or Sobre Blau, is in a trio with trumpeters Mark Cunningham and Pablo Volt, and with the improvised dance project Ensemble Topogràfic), because the engine of his creativity pursues very high goals: capturing moments, catching fragments of life both exterior and interior and connecting the mundane with transcendence.
Contact Agente
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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PRIMAVERA PRO
THE MAGIC EAR
Ven’nus
The music of Valèria Saurí, aka Ven’nus, is an emotional journey through melancholy and reflection. With her soft voice, she takes us into a world of introspection. Since she began composing while in confinement, her natural gift has generated great interest on the Catalan music scene. Her EP El naixement was a great success, and now, with her debut album Bocaterrosa, the expectation is even greater. Her influences, both literary (Maria Mercè Marçal) and musical (Frank Ocean, Ferran Palau) can be appreciated in her songs, but she has created a unique and personal style that sets her apart from the rest. The combination of deep, emotional lyrics with soft, soulful melodies makes her music quelque chose.
Shows at Primavera Sound 2023
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PRIMAVERA PRO
Contact Allau Management
SOMETHING SPECIAL
Catalan Institute for Cultural Companies (ICEC) - Catalan Arts
Catalan Arts is the brand used for the international promotion of Catalan companies that operate in the music, performing arts, books, visual arts and digital culture sectors. Hosted by the Catalan Institute for Cultural Companies (ICEC), Catalan Arts identifies the activities carried out by ICEC’s Market Development Department following the internationalization strategy implemented by the Government of Catalonia’s Ministry of Culture. Via ICEC’s network of offices (Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, London and Paris) we work on a variety of lines of action: funding, connecting, mentoring, promoting and supporting creative companies in their international journey.
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