- Wednesday night in Barcelona on the week of Sónar is the unofficial kick-off to the city's mid-June festivities. Both this year and last, Wedneday's pick of the litter was the Electric Minds (this year joined by mono_cult) party at BeCool. This medium-sized two-floor venue is known to seasoned Barcelona clubbers as much for its revolving downstairs dance floor as for its bookings. Situated a little out of the way, in the northeastern part of the Eixample area, it can suffer from a lack of passing trade out of season, but is reliably packed out for big nights during the summer. And as the early sell-out of advance tickets attested, a big night is exactly what this was.
Returning to the scene of last year's event were Prosumer and Move D, with Bicep and Soundstream joining them on the bill. After Prosumer finished an impressive set downstairs, Bicep took the controls, giving airings to gold-plated summer '13 house picks such as Innershades' "That Girl" and Paul Woolford's Switch-sampling "Untitled." Bicep's own forthcoming collaboration with Simian Mobile Disco, "Sacrifice," yielded both a hearty reception and hearty chuckles as a topless man covered in Bicep stickers danced onstage.
Move D's closing set in the main room was as flawlessly pitched a selection of house as you would expect from the Heidelberg maestro, with a couple of revisited cuts from his and Optimo's instant-classic Boiler Room set from a few months ago going off in particularly unbridled style. From every angle this was an excellent start to a week that, as usual, never allowed anyone who was locked into it to draw breath.