Winter Reflections on the Island

Summer is almost upon us on the island. In fact seasons are something that I have had to rethink since coming here. In October when you expect leaves to fall, few do. What does happen though is that the last of the seasonal visitors leave and their passing is almost as sad as the falling of leaves. But in the natural cycle of course we need to rejuvenate – and I know a number of people who would be dead if they didn’t get a few months of R&R. Summers here are intense - in the nicest possible of ways. Strangely the summer months are the time when the island is most barren but it still manages to buzz and sparkle.

We arrived here last spring – or rather I left the UK in spring but I arrived to what seemed like a pretty warm blue skied summer.  The summer months were a blizzard of names and faces and I can only apologise to the number of dear people who have said to me, “You can’t remember where we met can you?” I don’t think this face and name memory thing is anything new for me. It has long amused me that I can get completely thrown when I meet someone, who I might know very well but in a different environment. Like neighbours, of many years, who I meet in a bar on the other side of the city. A lady who I only ever see from waist upwards as she stands behind the counter of my local shop but who I can not compute when I meet her full length. Whatever, winter months here are a time to meet and reinforce those friendships previously only glimpsed from the whirlwind of the season.

The visitors go home and some days it rains but mostly I remember dazzling sunshine and trees full of figs and oranges. Then in January overnight the whole island is covered in small yellow flowers. This continues till round the end of February when the farmers plough up many of the fields to reveal vivid ochre toned soil, so that the land looks like a rather fanciful Impressionist painting.

Art Critic: “That’s ridiculous, the land never looked like that.”

Observer: “But that is the land.”

Then just as the yellow flowers have diminished to provide an edging to the landscape, rather than its main radiance, an army of wildflowers starts sprouting from everywhere and the roads are lined with ostentatious growths sprouting white and yellow flowered wheels.

Just before I left the UK I saw a programme on TV about the growing campaign to plant wild flowers in cities. Every council in the country pays quite a bit of money each year to plant bands of brightly coloured flowers in civic areas and roundabouts etc. It hadn’t occurred to me that these plants are largely useless as far as insects are concerned because they have been bred for colour and don’t produce any nectar. Sheffield is trying to lead the way in planting wild flowers in their city. As well as being more sustainable I think wild flowers could help soften the hard edges of a city. Part of the problem though is one of taste. In the West we are used the concept of man dominating nature so a perfect rectangle of identically coloured flowers appeals to our innate learned sense of order. I remember hearing a review once on the radio by an art critic who was comparing two contrasting exhibitions. One exhibition was of Chinese landscape painting, the other of Victorian photography. The critic noted how the attitude of Victorian Britain was summed up by one of the photographs which featured a formal group of inappropriately be-suited surveyors standing proudly and dominant infront of the mighty and majestic Victoria Falls on the boarder of Zambia and Zimbabwe. He noted that their demeanour seemed to suggest that they might have made this magnificent edifice themselves. By contrast he noted that in a large Chinese landscape painting you have to look quite carefully to see the tiny man with his donkey cart as it disappears behind a willow tree. He continued by comparing a Chinese poem with that of ah honoured Victorian British poet. I can only offer a wild paraphrasing but the Chinese poem read something like this.

Fragrant peony

Bursting through a broken wall

I stop to breathe with you

Then walk off remembering your sweetness.

By contrast the British poem went something like this.

Oh simple dandelion growing out of the crag of rocks

I stoop down and pluck you from your hiding place

Gazing at you in my hand I think, ‘what is it that make you live?’

By which time of course the poor bloody dandelion is dead!

So maybe it's not just public policy that needs to change but also an attitude about our relationship with the living world.

In the meantime music continues and while there are less opportunities to share it with others in the winter I still find myself putting in around 20 hours a week sifting through music websites hunting for gems, all of which will be revealed when summer finally breaks on the island.

Here is a mix I put together reflecting on this time:

Warm Winter Beaches Part 1

Warm Winter Beaches Part 2

The Spirit of Sharing Music

I have always been missionary spirited about music. It seemed the sole function of cassette recorders was so I could make mix tapes to share. And share I did, recording and duplicating programmes from pirate radio stations, white labels from friends working at the coal face of the music industry, plus my own selections, including everything from Afrika Bambata to The Grateful Dead. It never occurred to me that I was doing anything wrong by giving. Music is for me an expression of friendship and shared emotion. Why would I not want to share it.

Such a sharing attitude might be seen as be contributing to the decline of the music industry by promoting music for free. In reality though I, like many music fans, don't stop buying music just because some of it is available for free. So I tend to pay less for the more popular stuff, but the money I do spend tends to get redirected towards the more obscure producers who, to my mind, need it more than the famous acts. 

Also, as a devoted advocate of non-compressed music files, I often have to pay a supplement just to get my music in uncompressed WAV format. I think the music business does pretty well out of me. I know, I've heard all the arguments that there is very little difference between MP3's and WAV's but I'm not convinced. MP3's only carry about a tenth of the musical information of a non-compressed version so something is being lost somewhere. Maybe if you are playing banging stuff the difference won't be noticed over the beat, but in general if you want to keep the subtleties of a piece of music I would advice people to go for the none compressed versions.  I can usually tell when a DJ is playing MP3's as the music seems to lack punch. 

But I digress. I was talking about sharing music....


When I first arrived in Ibiza I mentioned to one DJ friend that I had been heartened by how supportive other DJ's had been towards me. I had half expected a cut throat competitive relationship between many of the DJ's, but what I found in most cases was unity based on shared experience — maybe they connected with that shared spirit of missionary zeal, of spending hours in record shops or on-line emporiums hunting for that elusive track that will be recognised for its greatness when played in public. 

However, one DJ told me that in his early days he had been a Hip Hop DJ and that things had seemed much more competitive then. Most of the records he played were hard to source imports and the scene was so competitive that he used to soak his new vinyl in the bath prior to a gig so he could remove the central label to prevent anyone stealing a glance over his shoulder and spotting a single clue to his unique appeal as a DJ. "Consequently," he moaned, "I now have tons of vinyl that, even to this day, I am not sure who the artist is!"

I suppose what prompted my comments about the supportive nature of other DJ's was an incident last season on the island. I had been doing a bit of Mac maintenance work for a DJ when he casually said, "Take what you want", meaning the music on his computer. I thought for a moment and then told him that as I was only staying somewhere temporary I didn't have a good internet link and had not been able to download any new tunes for the past couple of months. 

"Here," he said, "Take that folder. It has everything I've downloaded over the last two months." 

I happily copied around 300 WAV files onto my hard drive. Now this is a DJ I greatly respect. I enjoy his sets and admire his ability to hunt out new and obscure mixes. So I was looking forward to sifting through them. 

Later that evening though I was reminded of the special nature of our individual taste. Because no matter how much we appreciate another's taste, there is no doubt if we have spent time cultivating our own taste, then our taste will diverge from another person's in many ways. So out of 300 tracks there were only around 20 that took my fancy and probably no more than 10 which I might have bought myself had I the opportunity. And I realised that this would no doubt been the same had I passed on 300 of my tracks to him. 

Sharing music, no matter how rare and treasured, does not compromise or undermine our unique taste as a DJ. It's not just about having a particular tune to play, it's also how we frame that tune, what we mix it from and with. Based on this realisation I started to think the protective attitude which some have towards their collections might be a bit misguided.


I am always pleased when good things happen to friends of mine, when good fortune shines on them and life seems to give them a step up and a wave on their way. Strangely though not everyone shares my viewpoint. It's as though some people think that good fortune is a finite resource so when something good happens to someone else there is less possibility for it to happen to them and resentment and jealousy rear their ugly heads. 

My view is that our lives are all unique and what comes to one person is drawn by the action and energy of their lives so it is pointless to resent goodness that has been bestowed on another. I would rather focus on improving my own good fortune through my own efforts. 

In the same way I don't believe that sharing my own tunes with others will undermine my uniqueness as a DJ. To me it feels as though this spirit to share is an essential element that makes up the spirit of a DJ. The spirit to discover, appreciate, promote, share, that hopefully expresses itself in the unique sets we play.

Beat vs Mood Mixing

One of the main conventions of DJing is beat mixing or beat matching - the method of creating a transition between two tracks with a matching beat. If done well this can create a seamless transition from one track to the next. Perfect for the dance floor. This can be so satisfying for a DJ that it is all too tempting to build a set comprising similar tempo tracks even if the musical demands are not so dance orientated. I tend to play pretty eclectic sets so I find that my challenge is not how to how to create seamless beat matched sets but how, for example, to create a transition between one track at 128 bpm's and another that takes it down to 100 bpm. 

At first I started looking for tracks that had a similar music breakdown and start up. That is to say, if I could find one track that broke down at the end into a solo piano and another track that started with a solo piano, they could be butted up to each other to create a seamless transition. However, this is quite limited as there aren't too many tracks which fit this description. I then realised that the greater challenge is mixing moods not tunes. How can I create a sense of light and shade in a set. Do I really want to keep to the same tempo or has it got a bit intense? Maybe people would appreciate a breather with a lighter tone. 

Once I started playing with the idea that there is much more to DJing than beat matching, a world of possibilities started to open up. I could mix two tracks simply because they contained the same obvious word in the song lyrics, be it love, tears or, in one case, the word 'caravan' (The Doors Spanish Caravan mixed to Caravan by Mojo Rising). Although in this case the second track is an instrumental version so any possibility of people seeing the link would have been dependant on people knowing the original vocal track.

Another element now available to DJ's is mixing in key. That is to say, when playing digitally it is possible to identify the key of a track. I think that this technique is largely employed by club DJ's to create continuous seamless sets. But I don't want seamless sets. With seamless sets you stop noticing the music. Sometimes it is fun to be jolted out of complacency with something unexpected. However, I have started to use mixing in key because some tracks break down at the end to a single tone with the beats minimised. This means that the outgoing tone can be used to bring another track in the same key, which although initially quite subtle will then take off in a completely different direction. 


All of this is only available thanks to my devotion to the digital mixing software, Traktor.  The track listing window of Traktor helpfully provides information on track name, artist and genre etc but also allows for a comments section. For years I limited my comments to such descriptions as, 'Banging house good bass line' or 'Chilled mellow'. Then I started to realise that I have hundreds of tracks which might fit such a description so why not try to use more adjectives. It occurred to me that as the whole data base is instantly searchable I could make it as complex as my brain would allow and so I started to use many more adjectives and keywords. My data base has now been modified to such an extent that I can simply put in a word search for such terms as stimulating, muffled, anticipation, jubilant, heartfelt, crystal or many other emotive or descriptive terms that might be appropriate for the moment. For example, if I type in the word 'detective' it will immediately bring up about 30 tracks from all genres but with each features a sort of film noir theme. 

The problem with such multi layered mixing is that of endless possibilities. It is also means that caprice of my mind has suddenly presented me with two tracks which I have never mixed before. Add to this my personal dynamic that even when I have chosen a track to follow on I do not stop contemplating about the current mood in the bar or club. Frequently I will be hit with the thought that I want to change direction and mood when there are only around 30 seconds left of the outgoing track and I have to work at breakneck speed to find the replacement to mix to otherwise I will envelop the floor in silence. Of course such erratic behaviour means that I drop a mix every now and again but at least it keeps me amused and hopefully the audience too.

I was rather ardently explaining my method of DJing to a very patient and much more experienced chap one day and noted that probably no one had any idea what I was doing when playing a set. He said, 'Yes of course they won't, but that doesn't mean you should stop doing it.' It does however explain why, at the end of a six hour set, I feel brain dead ;-)

The Whispering Voices of Deep Balearic

I have always been a great fan of  vocal tape inserts in music. The Beatles were to a certain extent pioneers in the field and songs like I am the Walrus and Strawberry Fields both feature tantalising extracts of spoken words toward the end. In fact the words in Strawberry Fields were so tantalising that they were used by some fans to give fuel to the rumours of Paul McCartney's death signaled by the misheard line "I buried Paul." Paul McCartney later explained that in fact the words John Lennon had said were "Cranberry Sauce" Even more clearly elucidated pop lyrics are frequently misheard as a rather amusing routine by comedian Paul Kay illustrates. However, for me it is the very ambiguity of spoken word overlays that I find thrilling.

Frank Zappa was also a great exponent of this and his 1968 album, "We're Only In It For The Money" which parodies the Sgt Pepper cover is, thanks in a great part to voice overlays, a very powerful social comment on the times. I have listened to this album so many times that I know just about every whisper including what sounds like the ravings of  an acid head at a party being questioned as to whether she is "hung up."

The Clash and Mick Jones's follow on band Big Audio Dynamite also used tape to great effect and I particularly like what, to me, sounds like Michael Caine and others featured on their hit E=MC2

In the Dance world the use of vocal overlays has been used very successfully to bring power and pathos to a melody. Probably one of the most effective of these was the use of Martin Luther King's, "I have a dream" speech placed behind the haunting melody of Mr Fingers track Can You Feel It. 

Malcolm X has also been thoroughly sampled but what I really like is something more ambiguous - tracks that feature whispering barely discernible voices that hint of another dimension to the music. Thankfully this summer I have found rich pickings, so much so that I have identified it as a new sub genre and given it a name: welcome to Deep Balearic. 

Don't ask me to explain, instead I'll let the music do it for me with a selection of tracks that feature a beguiling simplicity of melody but with voices that gradually and hypnotically pull you in. I am obviously not the only person to feel this, the first few times I played each of these tracks they brought people rushing over to the DJ booth to demand the title.  

First off is Isaac by Superflu. The rap - from a time when rap meant rapping with the audience during a set, not rhyming rhythmic vocals - is from the master of on-stage rap, Isaac Hayes. To me it sounds as though he is chatting with someone in the front row, but maybe he is also introducing a song with a rambling tale of his own. I don't really know and it doesn't matter, but somehow each of those faintly grasped words is thrilling to me.

Monkey Safari's Hi Life is a very powerful track which in my imagination features the recordings of an elderly black American street junkie, recounting his early experiences of addiction and getting high on cocaine. This is no advert for the drug and at one point in it you can faintly hear his plaintive sigh as he notes, "It ain't always fun to be that high."

Andhim's Hausch This doesn't quite fit my description of taped overlays but the song samples have been degraded and distressed like a well-worn pair of jeans. I nearly drove myself and others mad trying to work out where the line came from that states, "She's not just a plaything, she flesh and blood just like a man." However thanks to the wonders of Google was able to remind myself that I know the line from Aretha Franklin's song Natural Woman. 

Speaking of new genres, did you know that one of the latest is called Night Bus. If I am right in my interpretation, this is a genre of fairly gentle tripped-out music that would be ideal for listening to after a night clubbing and journeying home, still rather high, on the night bus. The genre features music which is just psychedelic enough to feed your mood but not too raucous to blind you to any possible conflicts arising around you from other less chilled night bus travellers. 

I like the music but I also love the obscure concept of the genre almost as much as the sub genre of Nu Disco, which is described as Disco Not Disco, ie it features some of the motifs of disco such as the wacka wacka guitars, hand claps and orchestral stabs but combined in such a way that they bear no resemblance to disco, Nu or otherwise. And they said Dance music would never last....

Living in the moment

I am starting to become deeply concerned about how many couples walk into a bar when I am playing and immediately take out their smart phones instead of chatting or listening. Maybe they've run out of things to say but I think that it is more a case that we have been seduced by digital engagement as a way of validating our experiences.

Camera's are probably the most obvious example of this. Go to any concert and you will see hundreds of people avidly recording the event rather than experiencing the gig. Some years ago I watched a wonderful film called 2 Days in Paris. The gist of the film is that a French/American woman played by Julie Delpy has taken her boyfriend on a tour of Europe culminating in a 2 day visit to her parents in Paris. At the start of the film her voice can be heard explaining that she is a professional photographer but hasn't taken a single photograph during the whole holiday because she understands that taking photographs separates you from the experience. By contrast, she explains, her boyfriend has taken thousands of photographs and hated the whole experience of Europe. There then follows a montage of his photos which include everything from cups of coffee, gondoliers, meals and monuments.


I had a similar seminal experience of this some years ago when my wife and I visited Thailand. After an evening carousing with friends in their beach side hut we found ourselves staggering home closely followed by some very mangy stray dogs. Before long dawn appeared providing us, with what I think to this day, was the most epic sunrise I have every seen. Desperate to capture the moment on my new all singing and dancing camera I was frustrated because I couldn't work out how to turn off the auto focus and so couldn't get it to focus on the sunrise. Then I got the great idea that if I placed the dogs in focus in the foreground I might be able to capture the epic sunrise behind them. The result was that I have about half a dozen photos of rabid dogs licking their balls against a wall of blackness. Strangely enough these photos remain a tribute to that sunrise and a reminder that the best camera/recording device is the human mind and I since then I try to consciously capture memories by being aware of them when they are happening.

Young children now learn from an early age how to assume an on camera stance that will please the parents. They have now become the most photographed generation. Some time ago I had to help salvage a computer photo library for parents of delightful twins. I understand the pull to capture each stage of development but 20,000 photographs by the age of six might be a trifle excessive! On the other hand I have very few photos of my childhood apart from those first day at school pics and one of me stretching my legs to touch the floor on my new bicycle. I don't feel deprived.

Recently Shazam (the smart phone app which allows you to discover details of a piece of music) has tied up with Beatport, one of the largest DJ music web stores which means that many more of the obscure mixes we DJ's play are immediately searchable. The result of this is that I have seen people spending much of their time Shazaming my set. Maybe they don't want to bother me but actually I would much rather have a brief conversation sharing our enthusiasm for a track than being silent pillaged with their smart phone. However, I do understand how seductive collecting can be. Remember years ago when video and then dvd's first came on the scene. Remember how many of us set out to build our own personal libraries. Years later most of these many libraries, often containing unwatched brand new films, simply gathered dust and were then discarded as we downsized or moved homes. I realised sometime ago that thanks to You Tube much of the stuff that I wanted to save is now communally available and if not then it is great fun to try and explain the premise of a film or tv programme to friends.

It can be the same with music too. I have often sat listening to a DJ set by one of the master music explorers and wanted to run up to them every few minutes to ask what that track was. The truth though, in my experience, is that even if I had everything they played its joy might never be repeated outside the situation I first heard it. I experience this recently when a friend of mine played a wonderfully strange arabic techno track. I had never heard anything quite like it and wanted to own it for myself. Yet each time I've played since then it it has never excited me the way it did when I first heard it because it wasn't just a piece of music it was also a time and a place and a state of mind.

Obviously I am not calling for an end to the digital age, as I'm a willing participant myself, its just that I think we should stop and question whether the capturing and collecting of images and music actually adds to our appreciation. Next time you want to reach for your digital device maybe you will find it a useful to stop and think what you are experiencing. Why does this music resonate with you? What tone is it? What other tracks does it remind you of? What is it about your friends smile that you want to remember, because it probably isn't the posed version that you will get when you point a camera at them. What could you say or do to encourage it more frequently? I recently saw a young girl playing taking photos with her new iPad. She was pointing it at everyone she could and each person readily adopted the pose - which now always seems to include ubiquitous hand expressions or fingers pointed at the person next to them - this is most common when the person next to them is deemed as more famous or important. I suggested to her that if she really wanted to capture some good photos she should try to do it without people knowing. A while later she returned with a fabulous selection of secretly grabbed spontaneous shots of people just being themselves. Maybe that is the challenge. Just being, whether we are listening, talking, eating or whatever. The joy is in the experience and not as the manufacturers of these devices would have us think, in capturing the experience because experiences are ephemeral but when captured in our aware mind they will last much longer than their digital counterpart.

The Emperor's New Clothes

I suppose what I react to most strongly to is the idea of any sort of mono culture developing. The idea that one element of culture is cool while others must be ignored. This is particular true for me in music. Yes I have a bit of a hard time getting my head around opera and some of the sweeter elements of country music but otherwise I take it all as I find it - good, bad and indifferent. A friend of mine recently recounted how, when playing at a wedding reception, the groom approached him and said, "When are you going to play some proper Ibiza music like David Guetta?" My friend said he would have hit him but it was his wedding after all and while he was entitled to his opinion and besides he actually didn't have any David Guetta with him. The groom probably couldn't understand why my friend thought this to be such an outrageous statement but living on The Island one can will find a marvellous variety of music if you look for it. If you aren't looking then all you will see are the monstrous billboards with David Guetta crassly cupping his wife's breasts in his hands.

It seems to me as though the dance scene is in danger of being side tracked into a sort of fascist view of what is cool and in the main this seems to be focusing on Tech and Deep House. At least this seems to be the main fare in most of the clubs. Both are genres I have a great affection for but its just that hearing them to the exclusion of all other variants bores me rigid. Sometimes I wonder if the people listening to it in the clubs really enjoy it too. I was talking to another broadminded DJ friend of mine the other night who described visiting one of the mega clubs to see one of the mega DJ's at work. He told me that after a couple of hours, if someone had told him that the DJ had been playing a repeating loop tape he would not have been surprised. The only enlivening that seemed to be appearing from the endless knob twiddling of the mega DJ was the rather lame periodic removal of the bottom end. Maybe you have heard this from time to time. It's where the DJ twists one of the EQ buttons so that it takes all the bass out of the track leaving you with a whispering remnant of the melody. Then just as the bass kicks (suprise, surprise) he twists it back to central position again to accentuate the kick. I am constantly amazed how this simple trick seems to entrance some audiences for hours on end. The music goes wispy and the audience prepares themselves to leap into action like pavlovs dogs that have been trained to respond to dance music*. The thing is, I'm not sure if that many clubbers do enjoy this endless bland noodling. The music industry is very adapt at elevating some DJ's to such giddy heights that many club goers think that if they don't like it maybe they are not cool enough and after all, they had to take out a mortgage to enter the club and pay for drinks all night so it must be good.  I have often found myself wondering what drugs one can take that are able to transform such boring bland music into an enjoyable experience.

Maybe this is part of the problem. It hadn't occurred to me till recently just how all pervasive use of Ketamine has become within the dance culture. Of course drugs have always had their place in dance and youth culture but while Ecstacy (which I understand was once referred to as Empathy because it engenders and empathetic state of mind) is ideal for a shared experience on the dance floor, Ketamine is an all together more solitary experience. Recently I read a very good article by Tom Armstrong titled 'Dancefloors Against Ketamine' who described his excitement at attending a rave with a particular group of DJ's. What he found though was that the music seemed to have taken on a much darker tone that he was expecting with much slower beats and a very buzzy bass tone. What he observed were a large number of people obviously out of their heads on Ketamine staggering around the place barely able to keep upright let alone dance. He left the event part way through the evening but what really shocked him was, when reading the reports in various chat rooms over the next few days, how many people describing it as one of the best gigs that they had ever attended. In truth it may have been a great gig but only in each individuals head. It wasn't a shared experience in the sense that I have come to think of successful raves. There have been times when it has seemed to me that some raves have been an almost religious experience with their shared sense of ecstatic jubilation. Having read this article I have now begun to wonder how much influence K is having on the diet of music that is being fed to us in clubs.

It feels to me as though certain elements of club culture might well be finding a parallel with the fairy tale where a shyster persuades the king that he is giving him special invisible clothing. All works well until one noble subject shouts out, "The King has got no clothes on." Maybe it is time for people to stand up in the kingdom of dance and say, "I don't care if everyone is telling me he is a king, his music is dull and boring." 

Just in case anyone should think that this the rambling of a poverty stricken DJ, jealous of his more wealthy fellows I would like to say that I had the pleasure of being the warm up DJ for the warmup for the warm up at Carl Cox's birthday bash the other day. Carl is famed for his love of Techno but for his birthday both he and Pete Tong, who played after him, presented a widely diverse set which expressed something of the breadth of their love for dance music. Of course they are both adept at changing their sets to suit the occassion but I thought it was great that, Carl in particular, who has such a strong following for his hard core Tech sets was not afraid to show his sweeter side. Contrast this with some other DJ's who seem to be revelling in the studious intellect of mono culture. Of course I understand that we all have preferences but surely the whole dance culture was born out of a spirit of cross pollination so to ignore these roots would seem to be a narrowing of vision. It is also contributing to the same homogenising that has taken over our high streets. I for one would like to raise the banner for individuality that makes DJing entertaining not only for those listening but for the DJ as well.

Strangely enough I have found that younger audiences are the most conservative and prone to mono culture. I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised as when we are in our adolescence it is a time when we are still developing our sense of self and for many young people this brings with it a fear of being different. ie "I love techno but I f***** hate house!" The influence of mono culture is all pervasive. Even if we think we are behaving as individuals it is sometimes shocking when looking at photos of ourselves from times gone by to see how much we conformed to to the style of the times. To a certain extent we are limited by what is available and the mass media is a very powerful force in convincing us what is the cool way to exist. However, if we don't in some small ways challenge this tendency the end result is fascism or an intolerance of anyone who doesn't espouse our own views. 

I once attended a one man show with Quentin Crisp. Individuality was a major element of his talk. At one point he noted that if we look out of our window and see that the person to our right has built a path travelling from right to left across their garden and the person on the left has built a path from top to bottom, we should first of all think, "Am a diagonal person?" I have often considered that the loudest noise one can get out of a radio is when it is perfectly tuned into the station. In the same way we are at our most powerful when we are true to ourselves. Opening up to the various facets that comprise our personality brings power. This is true I think whatever area we work in. In DJing I have found that I get no joy out of playing something I don't want to play. Maybe it is a request for a track I actually like and have with me but it feels sadly hollow when I am playing something just to please someone. However it is a great thrill to introduce people to a newly found gem of music. I can't explain why I think it's a gem and in some cases I have to play it several times over a few gigs before others begin to see what I saw too.

So my appeal then is for greater individuality. I understand affiliations - being a dance music DJ is an affiliation and I am aware that there are many who would find such an affiliation very narrow but in our chosen area there is much to be discovered both in terms of heritage and new directions. Please can we hear more of this.


* I am certainly not the best exponent of some of the finer points of mixing but just to give an example of how some DJ's are more inventive than the hackneyed EQ cut, I had the pleasure the other day of witnessing a master at work on a famous beach. At one point he was playing a track which featured a sample of a jolly and familiar French jazz track. After several minutes of break beats and returning riffs the music suddenly and significantly started to slow down. This grabbed everyone attention and I am sure that some people maybe forgot for a moment that he was working digitally as it sounded as though the turn table was running down. Then it became clear what he was up to. He was slowing the whole thing down to the speed of the original French Jazz track so that he could cut it in and play it in its original unedited jubilant style. Magnificent. Risky yes but great fun and very entertaining.

Balearic DJing

I love all kinds of dance music in rhythm, style and tempo. The problem is that most clubs, understandably work under something of a beats per minute (bpm) tyranny. In order for people to be able to join the dancing throng there needs to be an element of predictability. Generally this means that a bmp of around 130 which is often maintain throughout the evening as DJ's mix seamlessly from one track to another. The objective of clubs is to get people dancing and keep them on the dance floor. That's what clubs are for. 

Maybe my problem is that I have a short attention span. I first noticed this some years ago playing in a small but rammed bar in Camden Market, London. the dance floor was bouncing when I began to notice that after about 5 house tunes many of the dancers were starting to use the same movements. I thought they might get bored if they carried on much longer (though it might have been me that was getting bored with their repetitive movements) so I decided that I was going to radically change style and tempo. There's no gentle way to move from House music to Reggae so I waited for the break in a track where the beat was less obvious and with a quick zip on the EQ and slid into reggae. There was a moments confusion on the dance floor but then a whoop went up as everyone immediately adapted and started to enjoy the different movements which the music encouraged. From that moment the spirit of Eclectika Sessions was born and I've continued to embrace diversity in my sets. Obviously that rules me out for most mainstream clubs but fortunately I have found my flavour and favour playing private parties, cocktail bars and daytime sun drenched venues.

For cocktail bars or private parties the criteria of engagement are quite different to clubs. If it's a private party I understand that the first couple of hours are going to be taken up with conversation and canapés. That doesn't mean you can't engage people. During the canapes and conversation stage of a party I have even had people approach me to apologise for not dancing, as if that is the only way they can show their approval. I reassure them. My objective is to stimulate and entertain and as I look across a crowded room I can see the head nodders and compulsive feet tapping unseen under the tables. I know when people are engaged. Of course as the evening progresses so do the beats and before they know it the food will have been cleared away and the dance floor fills up according to my party plan.

Daytime on beaches is a whole different arena. If I start playing round lunch time it will be breakfast for many of those who have dragged themselves to the beach after a hard nights clubbing. Some will have fragile heads and the cool beer they are clutching will be the hair of the dog. So for me Balearic lush beats are usually the order of the day, at least for starters. I think I first learned from my mate and fellow dj, Jon Sa Trinxa, that what some people might regard as chilled music can take you head off when played at volume. I would hate to be regarded as a chilled DJ as for me that often translates as bland and I certainly don't do bland. Some people refer to it as Downbeat but then again while I love a lot of downbeat stuff I would hate to feel confined and so regularly take off uptempo. For me it's about light and shade. Downbeat offsets uptempo just as a haunting melody in a minor key highlights the exuberance of an uplifting major key track to follow. What I would term Balearic beats are usually between 100 and 110 bpm with the kick of the beat softened by the lush overlays of the track. Even thought the music appears pretty chilled the volition of the music is still progressive. Here are a couple of examples of what I'm talking about.

Escape from New York by Filippson & Ulysses

Violet Morning Moon by Bubble Club

By a wonderful coicidence this same this same bpm is also the defining tempo of the Nu Disco genre which I have come to champion in recent years. Nu Disco is often made up of old disco tracks which have been slowed down and stretched with a hypnotic and heavy kick beat added. Consequently my sets tend to be interspersed with a healthy dose of Nu Disco. Here are a couple of examples.

Barry & Marvin by The Players Union

Hang On (Sade) by Get Down Edits

However as I said, I have a short attention span so it wont be too long before I start to drop in Minimal Techno tunes. Ah minimal techno. An evening of it would drive me to distraction because not a lot happens with Minimal. However, to my mind, in some cases it sounds as each tone has been hand crafted and shaped for precision and beauty - actually some Minimal is clangy and unpleasant but I tend not to buy that stuff ;-)

Dangly Panther by Jimpster

Unfortunately it seems that many beach bars on the island have been infected with the tyranny of the club music. I regularly encounter DJ's pumping an incessant diet of high volume techno or deep house to bemused looking sun worshippers.  Why I wonder? Maybe they don't really want to be playing on a beach and live in hope that a promoter from one of the big clubs is going to hear them and rescue them from their place of exile on the beach. Maybe it's because they can really only play what they like and just happen to have landed a poorly paid residency in a beach bar. Another DJ mate, George Solar, takes a more strident approach and maintains a strictly low bpm with his self named Comfy dub sessions. When asked recently why he didn't play techno in the very successful Babylon Beach bar he simply said, "Because I can." And who is to argue that his sets are anything but appropriate as he envelopes his audience with warm dubby tones while they soak up the rays or become engaged in beachside dinner conversations.

My own approach is somewhat more eclectic. Nothing is outlawed based on tempo or genre but I try to play with a degree of sensitivity to those present and a typical several hours set will see me visit most genres as I seek to actively engage everyone. When the whole Ibiza scene kicked off nearly 30 years ago the musical choices played in the clubs and terraces where decidedly eclectic. Over the years this inclusive eclecticism seems to have been narrowed so that people wrongly think that the Ibiza sound is techno or house. To my mind, by designating myself as a Balearic DJ means that I am aligning myself with the inclusive spirit on which the original scene was based. Some years back, for one of my Frisky Radio broadcasts I tried to roughly define what I mean by Balearic music. In some ways its very eclectic nature means that it defies definition but if you listen to the start of this mix you will hear my voice trying to explain my personal perspective on it. As I said this mix was produced a couple of years back but looking through it now I see that it was a valiant attempt to define Balearic and within a two hour mix which features a wide range of genres. (for convenience I have split the two hour mix into two parts which you can download if you wish)

What is Balearic? Part 1.

What is Balearic? Part 2