Notes from September 12 – 23, 2022
We received some really great advice from our friend in Ibiza. Mike Parry also added us to guest lists 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. They stop letting people in. You must push with the masses to enter. But outdoors is very nice. The music is played very low. It’s a nice place for cocktails.
We weren’t very motivated to push and shove to get inside the club. 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. It created a really fine ambience for a sunset dinner. It isn’t busy because Spanish eat at 10:00 at night.
I stopped by the DJ booth to compliment DJ Gaël. She said I was weird like her and gave me a 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. 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. It 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. It has no rhythm. It is 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. However, it is a super nice place to have a party with a great sound system. Unfortunately, it has 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. At the end of the night, Artbat played and they just reinforced our distaste for melodic techno.
Sunday
Was very good at Cova Santa. It was really groovy. The crowd was beautiful and older. The location and decor were great – Ibiza hippie chic at its finest. There were 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.
DC 10 gets to be a bit of a sausage party (too many men) later in the night. 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. It was easy listening music. He played some nice tracks. However, the way he presents it is kind of strange for us. We like more consistent rhythms. Solomun starts and stops too much for our tastes.
The best DJ we saw was DJ Stingray 313. Sven Vath followed very closely. Ben UFO, Seth Troxler b2b DJ Tennis, and DJ Gaël also impressed us.
we have remained disdainful of melodic techno (we have been making an effort to be open to it).
The Artbat set was really weak and undanceable. Tale of Us is pretentious and pseudo-spiritual. We heard some other music that we’re not really familiar with. Let’s call it Game of Thrones soundtrack music. It seems popular with the older crowd. It 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. The pandemic might be the cause. All of the people who’ve been waiting all their life to go to Ibiza seem to have come this summer.
And
Major corporations are taking over all of the clubs. Dance music is Big Business. It has 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.