Music festivals: How it should be done

Revellers at Sonar festival in Barcelona this weekend.

Now in its fifteenth year, Sonar festival of 'advanced music and multimedia art' is built on a virtually faultless formula of sunny, never ending days and a classy network of slickly run venues, snugly housed within Barcelona's historic and stylish cityscape. It sets a standard that Sonar's UK peers find near impossible to follow.

The perfect mix of music lovers and mangled party people, making the annual pilgrimage from all over the world, creates a vibe so smiley that its distilled essence could turn bullets to blossom. The small team of organisers are devoted to chronicling and pushing the global evolution of dance music, creating an intriguing line-up of far-flung names. Some of whom you definitely will have heard of, but many you very likely won't have.

The last decade and a half has seen the expansion and fragmentation of modern dance music beyond comprehension. While Sonar still reserves a special platform for that same breed of techno pioneer that it launched around in 1994 - Richie Hawtin, Jeff Mills and Ricardo Villalobos are handed the legendary 6am-7am closing sets- this year's bill is an A-Z of virtually every innovation and experimentation that's striving to keep dancefloors jostling in 2008.

A quick stroll from La Rambla, the Institute of Contemporary Culture is home to Sonar By Da - a collection of cooling halls and sun-kissed gardens that keep non-beach dwelling punters occupied until 10pm. The live collaboration between the Gran Canaria-born, Barca-dwelling much-hyped El Guincho and Ryan Mcphun of New Zealand's The Ruby Suns, provides a fittingly dreamy start to Friday afternoon. The outdoor courtyard enclosure buzzes with a carnival energy as the duo's hybrid of tropicalia loops, fuzzed-out bass and rumbling live and sampled drum fills ricochet off the crumbling terracotta walls overlooking the small stage.

Down the marble corridors of the main building and past an assortment of interactive multimedia fine art/design installations, is the basement alcove where Florida's uzi-rhyme-flowing batty-bass ambassadors, Yo Majesty, are bringing a sardined mob of hundreds up-to-speed with life-lessons from their forthcoming 'Kryptonite Pussy' EP. The couplets and booming, shuffling Baltimore-style break-beats show another burgeoning side to the Sonar coin.

A mile outside the city centre is the 10,000 square metre aircraft hanger that hosts Sonar By Night. Four dancefloors - two open air - equipped with state-of-the-art soundsystems, house nearly 40,000 frenzied ravers. Over three nights, an array of new dance music heroes cut their teeth on career milestone crowds.

Of them, the feeding frenzy that surrounded Diplo's mainstage slot on Friday night seemed to hold the most gravitas. With unparalleled finesse, the talisman of the 'new world music' plies his way through breakneck ghetto-funk mixes from around the globe. From the unified swell of the crowd, it seems the audience have picked their sound of the moment.

In terms of pure drama, the kings of rambunctious Franco-centric electro, Justice, also rank among the top of a long list of highlights. Relentless mangled bass growl and shattered digital shards rain down upon the unsuspecting masses, as their signature white neon crucifixes leave an indelible menacing impression upon the arena.

On the closing Sunday morning, three of the chambers of Sonar By Night grind to a halt an hour early, shifting the entire audience to the final set in the largest outdoor hold. This year's closer is Ricardo Villalobos, the Berlin-dwelling Chilean ex-pat, who has come to embody the latest minimal shifts in the techno spectrum. Caked in broad daylight, and with a lukewarm breeze trickling over the tens of thousands of sweaty heads, the iron-clad beats hit the baying hanger with an intense fury. The sheer enormity of the scene is nothing short of breathtaking. The energy, care and attention that has creating an event of this magnitude beggars belief, but such is needed to create what is really the ultimate modern dance music experience.