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Fifteen years of Primavera Sound

The upcoming edition of the festival, from the 28th to the 30th of May, features names such as Patti Smith, Belle & Sebastian, The Replacements, Antony and the Johnsons, The Strokes, Foxygen and Sleater-Kinney, as well as a multitude of parallel activities

The Primavera Sound Festival has always focussed its attentions on offering a programme that features the latest independent musical proposals together with a series of established artists from a wide variety of genres in an ongoing search for quality and concentrating principally on pop, rock and contemporary underground trends in electronic and dance music. This raison d'être for the festival has been compensated year after year with an increasingly more significant media echo on both a national and an international level as well as increased attendance at the festival, last year's edition having been attended by 190,000 people. This, the fifteenth edition of the festival, will take place from the 28th to the 30th of May in the Parc del Fòrum.

On Thursday the 28th the festival will play host to top-flight acts the likes of The Black Keys, with their popular style of blues-rock, James Blake, the grand stylist of contemporary electronic music, Spiritualized, or the Great Godfather of techno, Richie Hawtin. One of Thursday's highlights will be Anthony and the Johnsons, who will be accompanied by the Barcelona Symphony and Catalonia National Orchestra, another being the legendary US indie outfit The Replacements. The day's offerings will also include Sun Kil Moon, Sunn O))) and Panda Bear.

On Friday the 29th Patti Smith & Band will return to the festival to re-interpret the record that transformed the singer into a legend and eternal rock muse, Horses. Other big names on the Friday include Belle & Sebastian, a veritable institution in Scottish pop and frequent visitors to the festival, Ride, together again after a separation of almost two decades, and the pop heterodoxy of Alt-J. The day's offerings will also feature Ariel Pink, a prolific author with an eclectic and extravagant personality as well as punk-rock bands Sleater-Kinney and The Julie Ruin. Another must-see on the day will be Núria Graham, an emerging talent on the Catalan scene.

On Saturday the 30th The Strokes, Interpol and Swans will once again state their claim as genre references and will be accompanied by, among others, the hard-bitten electronic sounds of Underworld, and Tori Amos with her classical, spiritual yet contemporary piano and vocal stylings. Friday will also feature Foxygen, the new faces of classic Californian pop, as well as other bands and singers such as Neleonard, Ben Watt, Kevin Morby, Mac DeMarco, Thee Oh Sees, Mujeres and Joan Miquel Oliver.

In addition to the three days of the festival, for some years now the organisers have also offered a week of concerts for those who simply don't have enough with the Fòrum programme. Under the banner Primavera als Clubs the programme will offer performances by Fucked Up, Nancy Whang and The Juan McLean in venues such as the Apolo and the BARTS. The Primavera a la Ciutat programme, for its part, will offer free concerts including, on Wednesday the 27th, Las Ruinas, Panama, Christina Rosenvinge, Cinerama, Albert Hammond Jr. and OMD. The same programme includes two sub-sections, Primavera als Bars and Primavera als Barris.

Primavera Sound Festival

When: from the 28th to the 30th of May

Where: Parc del Fòrum

Tickets: 90€, Day tickets; 195€, Dull festival ticket

More information here

Publication date: Tuesday, 19 May 2015
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