Primavera Sound

At the end of May we took a fourth annual trip running to Barcelona for the Primavera Sound festival held at the large Parc Del Forum along the coast. It was a biggie this year with highlights including QOTSA, NIN, Pixies, Arcade Fire, Factory Floor, Andy Stott and Kronos Quartet. Great fun was had at the festy as always with an extra day of recovery in the beautiful city consuming plates of padron peppers.

Barcelona Mad

Another year, another glorious trip to Barcelona and the Primavera Sound festival. Musical highlights for me this year included The Knife, OM, The Breeders, Neurosis, Roll The Dice, Meat Puppets, Phoenix and Blur. After three days of festy mayhem we spent the rest of the week absorbing (a lot of) the city's amazing food & drink and checking out the incredible sights. Trips up to Montjuic, Gaudi's gorgeous Park Güell and nearby Montserrat cliff top monastery were ticked-off before tucking into great tapas at Picnic, ales at Le Cerveteca and noiry cocktails at Gimlet.

Barcelona Redux

Here's a little montage of sights and sounds from a recent trip to the beautiful Barcelona. From our base in El Born we ventured out to the excellent Primavera Sound festival for the second year running to watch some amazing music from the likes of The Cure, Mudhoney, LFO, Matias Aguayo & Rebolledo and Brum metal legends Napalm Death and Godflesh amongst others. Spent the rest of the trip taking in the city, spectacularly so from the top of Tibidabo, recovering by the hotel pool and munching muchos tapas. Tremendous.

Spanish Castle Magic

Been back from Barcelona and Catalonia for well over a week but still there in my mind, chomping on padron peppers and slurping the gin *sigh*. Anyway here are a few snaps from the trip which started with four nocturnal days at the Primavera Sound music festival held at the concrete-tastic Parc Del Forum overlooking the Med. Musical highlights for me included Interpol, Deerhunter, PIL, Grinderman, Factory Floor, Battles and the brash Odd Future. We spent a couple of days re-adjusting our post-festival body clocks taking in beautiful Barcelona and enjoyed a memorable trip to Ferran Adrià's new cocktail joint, 41 Degrees, sampling the great drinks and bizarro snack delights such as Parmesan Ice Cream sandwiches and the mysterious Fake Pistachios, all topped by the chance appearance of the amiable elBulli celeb-chef himself at the table next to us...whoop! After the city break we drove up the coast to the lovely Dali-centric Cadaqués, where we were based for the last three days, squeezing in a daytrip to nearby medieval Besalú and crag-perching Castellfollit de la Rocha. On the final day we strolled the lovely seafront at Sitges before shooting off to the airport and home, tired but inspired.