Notes from September 12 – 23, 2022
We got some really great advice and added to guest lists by my dear friend in Ibiza Mike Parry at https://luckylifeibiza.com/
Wednesday
Las Dalias / Akasha Ibiza this is a great place that gets intensely overcrowded at night. Las Dalias is an outdoor market with bars, hippy markets, restaurants, and chill-out hybrid music. Then they have Akasha Indoor club for dancing. They have a really good sound system and lighting. The crowd is super chic.
We went to Namaste – the music wasn’t very memorable, but we had a pleasant time. After a while, the indoor club gets packed, and they stop letting people in, so you must push with the masses to enter. But outdoors is very nice even though they have the music playing very low – it’s a nice place for cocktails.
We weren’t very motivated to push and shove to get inside the club because the music was a little bit weak. We met some cool people in the garden though.
Thursday
Sa Trinxa – this is one of our favorite beach clubs. This place is old school Ibiza.
DJ Gaël was spinning a rather psychedelic techno / house set really a fine ambience to have sunset dinner and it isn’t busy because Spanish eat at 10:00 at night.
When I stopped by the DJ booth to compliment DJ Gaël she said I was weird like her with the big smile – I felt right at home.
Friday
Club Chinois nice place interesting (?) over the top decoration a little bit cheesy Las Vegas for our taste but I think it actually is very comfortable atmosphere with an incredible sound system and not bad lighting but the artistic choices are quite suspect they were projecting Van Gogh during the slower BPM slightly trancy Tale of us, game of thrones music by DJ Satori I’m not sure what genre that his music fits into maybe melodic techno.
We at Peace of Mind are not into melodic techno we found that stopping the rhythm and playing overly pretentious intros in the middle of the set is boring and interrupts the collective energy on the dance floor it’s okay to play synthesizers and psychedelic intros as long as you keep up the rhythm, melodic techno does not, we go to nightclubs to dance, not to stand around and film the light show with our phones.
It is music for zombie k-holers and selfie-centric instagramers who don’t want to mess up their makeup, you can’t dance to it even if you wanted to, no rhythm, fake overly emotional, pseudo sentimental and boring.
Let’s hope it is a short lived trend that evolves into real danceable music for the dance floor.
Also
I know I’m a snob about art, because my ex-wife is an art historian.
But Vincent van Gogh doesn’t belong anywhere near the dancefloor.
Saturday
Ushuaïa
ANTS INVASION
SAT. 17TH SEPT.
16:00-17:00 MAZE & MASTERS
17:00-18:15 MAYA JANE COLES
18:15 19:45 ALAN FITZPATRICK
19:45-21:15 ANDREA OLIVA
21:15-23:00 (CLOSE) ARTBAT
It rained and it was glorious.
Ushuaïa is an overly commercial nightmare equally super nice place to have a party with a great sound system and a spectacularly horrendous VIP shithole.
But it rained and that had a nice rave like effect into the mix of the outdoor day party.
We found the music to get progressively worse and at the end of the night was Artbat and they just reinforced our distaste for melodic techno.
Sunday
Was very good at Cova Santa really groovy beautiful older crowd and a great location and decor – Ibiza hippie chic at its finest with dancing shows and sequins makeup. The amount of beautiful people can be intimidating.
Amnesia was a bit of a let down with the exception of DJ Stingray 313 who put on an excellent very unique hard minimalist with an emphasis on very complex rhythms techno set.
Monday
DC-10 – Circoloco was terrific Sven Vath is just magical Seth Troxler, DJ Tennis and especially Ben UFO where also very strong.
But DC 10 gets to be a bit of a sausage party (too many men) later in the night and they closed the outdoor area so the indoor dance floors are very packed, that said music wise, it was the best party we went to in Ibiza.
Wednesday
Solomun free event at the port de Ibiza was slow and lugubrious – easy listening music – he played some nice tracks but the way he presents it it’s kind of strange for us – we like more consistent rhythms, Solomun starts and stops too much for our tastes.
So the best DJs we saw was DJ Stingray 313 followed very closely by Sven Vath, Ben UFO Seth Troxler b2b DJ Tennis and DJ Gaël.
we have remained disdainful of melodic techno (we have been making an effort to be open to it).
Artbat set was really weak and undanceable like Tale of us which is pretentious and pseudo spiritual and some of the other music that we heard that we’re not really familiar with, let’s call it Game of Thrones soundtrack music seems popular with the older crowd is slightly entertaining but a little too slow to maintain dance floor coherence.
It is bad new-age music.
New-age music died in the early 90s for a good reason it was spectacularly horrendous, here is an example https://youtu.be/4F9DxYhqmKw .
So in conclusion Ibiza is a wonderful hot mess – This may be because of the pandemic and all of the people who’ve been waiting all their life to go to Ibiza seem to have come this summer.
And
major corporations taking over all of the clubs, dance music is Big Business and it’s had a Las Vegas like effect on the scene we love.
We question the artistic direction of the DJ selection but Ibiza remains a terrific place to visit.
Just wear sensible shoes because your feet will get stomped on.