Sigur Rós
Photo: Fatcat Records

BARCELONA, Spain — Catalonians know a thing or two about the slow build, as evidenced by the bewildering 18-plus hours of music at the opening day of the eighth annual Sonar International Festival of Advanced Music and Multimedia Arts.

There is no better location from which to scout the front lines of electronic music's forces than Sonar, which unites the scene's wide range of sonic renegades and parades them through the vibrant city. Thursday's performers alone — from Vladislav Delay to Terry Riley, Sigur Rós to Carl Cox and Darren Emerson, Sonic Youth to Aphex Twin — were enough to send a visitor home both satisfied and enlightened.

From the first record, reflecting the midday sun, spun at noon until the light shone again early Friday morning on still-crammed dance floors, Sonar was in full swing — and it was just getting started, with two more days of stunning lineups still on tap.

Like other global techno gatherings such as the Winter Music Conference in Miami Beach or Berlin's Love Parade, Sonar's attendance has grown exponentially with the music's ascent over the last decade, as witnessed by the 10,000-strong flock Thursday night. It has also managed to avoid those festivals' pitfalls, however, by sticking to its guns as a celebration of electronic music's artistic core and providing a glimpse at what the leaders of the avant-garde and the experimental are up to today.

Divided somewhat manageably into day- and nighttime sections over three days — the former presented on four stages at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània in downtown Barcelona, the latter in three hangar-like spaces (one outdoors) at a massive expo center west of the city center — Thursday's sun-dappled warm-up was capped by a solo outing from Terry Riley, who along with Steve Reich and Philip Glass is considered one of the gurus of experimental electronic music in its myriad guises. To an overwhelmingly youthful crowd that appeared well informed of Riley's far-reaching influence, the composer moved fluidly through a range of styles. One piece found him on the piano, wowing with a steady harmonic pulse with one hand while fluttering out a playful rag-like blues with the other, combining minimalism and jazz with aplomb. Moving over to a synth for his next piece, Riley triggered a stuttering electronic rhythm that showed he's been keeping up with the techno Joneses, and he accompanied it with soaring raga-influenced scales, even adding a few Eastern chants along the way. Riley's minimalist aesthetic has been all the rage with the latest crop of experimental producers (whether they're aware of it or not) over the last year, not least among them the Finnish phenom Vladislav Delay. Performing from his achingly spare and deliberate oeuvre (he will present his deep-house persona, Luomo, Friday night) in the Capella dels Angels (Chapel of the Angels) Thursday night, Delay's cascades of gurgling washes swirled through the chapel's chambers, enchanting and exciting as they soared. At Sonar by Night, the arty Icelandic ensemble Sigur Rós, a last-minute addition, revealed that they, too, can achieve great musical heights with an uncomplicated palette. Following a performance by Sonic Youth that further highlighted new and old by presenting works by pioneering experimentalist John Cage and Yoko Ono (both covered on their 1999 self-released collection, Goodbye 20th Century), Sigur Rós began a set that continued to swell in intensity throughout its 45 minutes. First accompanied by a guitarist and two keyboardists and eventually surrounded by seven with the addition of a violinist, cellist, bassist and drummer, singer Jon Thor Birgisson, with bowed guitar, effected a pained-ecstasy expression to accompany his spine-tingling vocal emissions, and the look never left his face. When the band's gradual arch hit full tilt — on "Svefn-G-Englar," from their 1999 album Ágætis Byrjun, and the closer — the effect, straight outta the hypothalamus, was simply breathtaking.

Aphex Twin, perhaps techno's most directly descended minimalist, dispensed with any formalities upon taking to the decks for his much-anticipated DJ set, embarking on the sort of distorted, hyperactive drum'n'bass excursion that has become his trademark in recent years. The man (a.k.a. Richard D. James) who built an infallible reputation on tranquility and subtlety has entered the realm of the inexplicable, and, often, the undanceable. Aphex followed on the heels of an excellent live set by the U.K. duo Plaid (Ed Handley and Andy Turner), whose matching consoles and flat-screens emit reliably warm and creative dance grooves nearly every time they perform.

Across the hall of the expo center in SonarClub, beats of the more conventional, but by no means generic, variety could be found pounding out of the loudspeakers via the expertly manned turntables of Darren Emerson and Carl Cox, who kept the dance floor moving until dawn with a mix of hard house and techno, including what appeared to be the club debut (spun by Cox) of Green Velvet's "Lala Land," the first single from his upcoming album (see "Green Velvet Completes Whatever, His Most Personal Work"). The eighth annual Sonar International Festival of Advanced Music and Multimedia Arts ends Saturday.

• Sigur Rós
• Aphex Twin
• Carl Cox
• Sonic Youth
• Green Velvet

Timo Maas
Photo: Reprise

Paul Oakenfold, Carl Cox, Deep Dish, Seb Fontaine, John Kelley and Dave Seaman can't all be wrong. Timo Maas is undeniably hot.

The Düsseldorf, Germany, techno, house, trance and breaks DJ/producer has given tracks to mix albums by those top tier DJs and at least 20 others in the past two years. He's also been commissioned by BT, Green Velvet and Madonna to remix their high-profile singles — "Never Gonna Come Back Down," "Flash" and "Don't Tell Me," respectively.

As the centuries turned, Maas was everywhere. Now, dance music aficionados who have grown accustomed to what Maas calls "wet and hard funk" are asking: Can Timo keep up the pace? "Well, the truth is, last year I did four remixes and everything else was a re-release from the last four years [dug out from the vaults] as my name got bigger, so I never had that pace to begin with," Maas admitted Friday. Still, 2001 is shaping up to be another landmark year for the über-producer as he plans to release his first true mix album and first true production album (his debut last year, Music for the Maases, was a combination — a mix album of his catalog of singles and remixes). Maas, who was introduced to American audiences with a residency at New York's famed club Twilo, will also soak the rest of the country on Moby's Area: One tour.

His mix album Connected, released May 15 on Kinetic, gives fans a hint of what to expect when he comes to a festival tent near you.

"It is the sound of exactly now for me," Maas said of the double-disc release. "Mixing compilations is very similar to mixing a set, as you need†to choose the right records, and the right balance between very new and records just breaking as the compilation arrives in the stores. And you have to build the music like a whole night out." Connected includes a collection of underground dance ditties and mainstream club hits. Maas' own remix of Fatboy Slim's "Star 69" kicks off the second album, while Deep Dish's "Gladiator Remix" of Delerium's "Innocente," featuring Leigh Nash of Sixpence None the Richer, is a highlight on the first album. DJ Dave Clarke also appears on the album, with a remix of Midfield General's "Coatnoise." Maas contributes a new track, "OCB," and a remix of Placebo's "Special K." "The album needs to appeal to a broad cross section," Maas said of Connected, which flows from freaky breaks to hypnotic trance. Maas, who scored Top 40 singles in Europe with his own "Der Schieber" and "Ubik," and a Top 10 hit with his remix of Azzido Da Bass' "Dooms Night," will venture into all sorts of dance music territories on his production debut, Loud, due in October.

"The direction will be something of a surprise to people," Maas said. "It's quite varying in styles, with a lot of guitars, a bit of rapping and very funky, as well as some quite rough techno tracks on it." Maas experimented with rock on "Ubik," which featured Martin Bettinghaus from German funk group Spice on vocals, and will dabble in R&B later this month when he remixes a track from Kelis' new Wanderland. Come July 11, when Area: One opens in Atlanta, expect to see Maas not just behind the decks, but in the crowd, taking in music that ranges from Nelly Furtado to Outkast to New Order (see "Area: One Festival's Details Come Into Focus").

"Obviously, clubs are my roots, but I'm looking forward to seeing something new, especially since the album is heading a little in that direction," Maas said. "[Area: One] will help me represent myself to a more live audience rather than club, which I'm excited about." Area: One, which also includes fellow DJs Oakenfold, Cox and the Orb, will hit 16 cities across the U.S. this summer.

Maas will also play the following club dates, according to his publicist:

• 6/16 - Miami, FL @ Crobar
• 6/17 - New York, NY @ Centro Fly
• 6/20 - Las Vegas, NV @ Ra
• 6/21 - Houston, TX @ Hyperia
• 6/23 - Los Angeles, CA @ Circus
• 6/24 - San Francisco, CA @ Spundae

• Timo Maas
• Paul Oakenfold
• Carl Cox
• Madonna
• Kelis

Green Velvet
Photo: Melanie Nissen

Fresh from the final mastering of his second album, titled Whatever, Green Velvet, the bizarro bard of techno's underground, is ambivalent about the great wide open that is his future.

F-111, the Warner Bros. dance imprint that last year collected his club classics, such as "Flash" and "Answering Machine," on a successful self-titled CD, has gone kaput, leaving Whatever homeless in America.

But for a laissez-faire, devil-may-care artist like Green Velvet (born Curtis T. Jones and known alternately as Cajmere), every cloud has a silver (or green-velvet) lining.

"It's sad. It's a tragedy," he said from his downtown Chicago home. "At the same time, now I'm a free agent" — the burst of noise that is his trademark cackle is discharged — "and I do feel like I have a decent album, so I have so many more options, which is sorta cool." The album is due in September, but until a U.S. deal is inked, he said, no dates can be considered solid.

Velvet's notorious flamboyance is balanced by a sincere modesty, evidenced when he calls Whatever "decent." Although sonically similar to his decade-long trail of full-throttle futuristic techno tracks combined with hilarious monologue raps — on topics ranging from alien abductions to days gone horribly awry — the new album's 10 songs show Velvet at his most deeply personal.

"Gene Defekt" starts things off with an anti-technology rant over an electro-style stomp. "GAT (Great American Tragedy)" is a punky wake-up call to society's misguidance. "When?" is a tirade against racism and people unwilling to accept difference.

Not that GV's gone and gotten all serious on us.

"I wanted to do an album which would be a bit more, I call it accessible, but at the same time it's not trying to be commercial," he explained. "It's something I think is more danceable — I could easily have made a lot of the tracks instrumentals, and DJs would've been fine playing 'em — but I wanted to give it a bit more substance, so that's why I added the vocals." He said the live Green Velvet shows he played last year as a trio — with Christopher Nakuza and Hugo "Spaceboy" Moya — influenced his approach to the new material, which he recorded at Chicago's legendary Trax Studios in December and January.

"With my prior productions, they had a lot of vocals in them, but not the 'energy vocals' is how I describe them," he said of the new album. "By doing the shows, I learned how to have a bit more sense of how to let my own personal character come through." The first single, "Lala Land," which will be released in May (accompanied by as-yet-unconfirmed remixes) through his European label, Music Man, is a perfect example of this style, with Green Velvet intoning a rap-style chant — "Somethin' 'bout those little pills, unreal, the thrills they yield, until they kill a million brain cells" — over a slow-building minimal-techno beat. Seemingly a subversive send-up intended for chemically enhanced ravers, he claimed that notion never entered his green mind.

"Sometimes things just come to me, and I just have to go with 'em," he said. "To those who may partake in that activity, it's not new information. It's sort of like 'Flash,' which is totally a track for the scene and which you would only hear at a rave or a club. But as the years go by, other people start to see that it makes sense in a different sort of way." Following the wider recognition he gained from last year's Green Velvet, especially in the U.S., the pressure was on for some new tracks. (His only other proper album, the more abstract Constant Chaos, came out in 1999.) "There are a lot of new kids on the scene who don't know about a lot of the older tracks, so that was cool," Velvet said of the compilation. "But all the people that have been following me for years, they were like, 'God, you done beat us over the head with these, when you gonna come out with something new?' " Problem solved — now shut yo mouth.

• Green Velvet