Lost In Translation

I am rather ashamed to say that, after two years living in Spain, my grasp of the language is progressing at a glacial pace. However, it seems that I’m not alone amongst expats and periodically this can lead to some interesting misunderstanding. Every couple of months I put together a new 2 hour mix featuring my recent favourite tracks.

DJ Howard's MixCloud

Towards the end of last year one of my friends told me how much they loved the VIP song on one of my mixes. I wasn’t quite sure what she was talking about but thanked her and thought nothing more until another friend told me about how she and her daughter loved dancing round the kitchen dancing to the “VIP” song. Obviously something was resonating with people and so I began researching which of my nearly 50 mixes they were talking about. In the end I discovered that the track in question was a jolly Brazilian number called, “Take Me Back to (no not the VIP but) Paiui” by Juco Chaves. When I bought the track I had no idea where Paiui was (it’s north eastern Brazil) but from the enthusiasm of the singers it sounds as though it’s worth visiting and is much more exciting than any VIP area I have been in. However, it appears that some of my friends have a much more positive experience of VIP areas which is why they are so enthusiastic to return to those privileged places.

Take Me Back To Paiui by Juco Chaves

Although my understanding of Spanish is less than basic I love the sound of it and while I might regard French as sounding sweetly sexy, to my ignorant ears, the sound of some female Spanish singers is positively erotic. In fact amongst my enthusiastic collecting of various Latin music I have a particular penchant for that which feature the husky whispering of erotic sounding Spanish women.

So it was that one day last year I found myself playing to a full beach restaurant including many Spanish families. I had been proudly playing an assortment of Latin flavoured vibes for the past half hour when I decided I would drop a gentle deep house track with an almost whispered female vocal. But of course, while it might have been whispered in the mix, played through the clarity of a Funktion One sound system all was perfectly clear to hear. The track hadn’t been playing long before I was jolted by the site of a women, seated with her young children on the other side of the restaurant, who shot me a sudden and staggering glance of outrage. She said nothing but I knew immediately she was in effect saying, “What the fuck do you think you are doing playing that with young children present.” I didn’t stop to query but rapidly brought down the fader to replace it with another more neutral track. It was only in retrospect that it occurred to me that the reason the voice sounded so enticing and erotic was because it was sampled from a Spanish language porno film. I have still have no idea exactly what she was saying but now, listening to it again, its intent is as clear to me as the young mothers withering glance.

Then, a couple of weeks back, I came across a Tango style song. The vocals were male and there was something lascivious and cheeky about his voice. I loved it immediately but based on my previous experience was determined to be a bit more circumspect before playing it in public. So, before playing it at a gig I approached one of the waitresses and asked her to listen out to the lyrics and tell me if it said anything inappropriate and if so to please let me know immediately so that I could mix to something else. When I put it on she was on the other side of the restaurant and turned to smile to me waving positively as it progressed. After it finished she came over to tell me that the words were saying something like, “They say I have a big nose but I am enjoying my life.” She then added, “I think they are talking about cocaine but it is never mentioned.” Phew, got away with that one then.

If you would like to hear the rest of the mix featuring Take Me Back to Paiui here’s a link:

Warm Winter Beaches

Alternatively here is my latest mix:

Gratitude for Sunshine

DJ's Wanted

Along with the tourists who flood to the island there are thousands of experienced and wannabe DJ’s who perform at just about every bar and restaurant. For a long time there has been something of a running complaint amongst resident DJ’s that many of the newcomers haven’t the faintest idea how to entertain in sun-drenched daytime hangouts. In fact it seems as though many of them are merely playing their full on night time sets, to musically bludgeoned diners, in the hope that they are going to be discovered and launched into a mega career as club DJ’s. Instead of which, some of them will spend the whole summer playing for very little, if any, money just for the thrill of ‘living the dream’.

At the other end of the scale there are the large corporate venues, some coming from successful ventures in other European countries, who are now looking to grab a slice of the summer season action. Admittedly they do not tolerate such wanton abandon with the musical menu but it seems to me that in many cases, they are just providing a bland filler which ticks the box of ‘resident DJ’. In one venue I played, the preceding DJ informed me that the rule was that we were not to play anything above 115bpm during the afternoon set. Then even before I had played my first track the assistant manager came over to proudly demonstrate his understanding of DJ techniques by repeating nugget of esoteric doctrine. 

I understand the rationale that if you limit the DJ’s to a certain bpm then it will keep the atmosphere chilled but in reality many of the most sublime and blissful Balearic tracks come in at much higher bpm and the real challenge is to find DJ’s who know what they are doing and trust their judgement. This of  course requires musical judgement by the management and in truth they have more on their mind and so, for some venues, the hiring of DJ’s is just another post to be filled along with getting a decent washer up for the kitchen.

The other end of the corporate music culture is to be witnessed in many of the new wealthy visitors. I was playing a chilled set round a hotel pool the other day when towards the end a group of around eight residents appeared all dressed up for their night ahead. One of the things that has always impressed me with the island is that it is non-ageist and it wasn’t just the age of these guests which I noted rather their demeanour and fashion sense. I felt confident that back in the UK their regular hangs outs would not have been rave clubs but more likely the local golf club or even Conservative club. So, where were this crew going for the night? Why to Ushuaia Hotel, one of the islands more full on and expensive venues. 

As they walked off towards their cabs I noted to a friend that they were going to absolutely hate it and would no doubt find themselves shelling out several hundred pounds during the evening and returning home lighter of wallet but full of tales of what an appalling night of cacophony they had to endure and how they were forced to pay exorbitant prices for drinks and food. The owners of Ushuaia aren’t too bothered though as, while this group might not visit their establishment again, there are many more to keen to buy into the ‘Ibiza experience’. 

I am now starting to wonder where some of these Ibiza venues are advertising. Are they placing enticing ads in Saga Magazine, The Lady and Country Life? Probably not but what has happened is that Middle England has been introduced to the delights of Ibiza through the celebrity columns of the Daily Mail and everyone wants a bit of the dream.

Lest I sound rather jaded in my comments I would add that the island continues to delight and entertain. Its spirit draws to it many open minded creative individuals and I am continually surprised how many DJ’s can produce sets which feature track after track of new tunes to my ears which, given the amount of time I personally put into listening to new music, is always a surprise and delight.

One of my fellow DJ friends here is MOC Paoli (to my mind a much under appreciated local treasure) who has long been resident DJ and responsible for much of the ambience of the exotic Bambuddha Grove. Paoli dates back to the Goa Trance scene of the early 70's and in fact is credited as being one of the people who helped to develop this particular genre of music. Noting that the early 70's was way before the dance scene kicked off in Europe and before sampling machines had even been imagined, I asked him how it came about. He remarked that at the time it was not uncommon for acid beach parties to take place in Goa with up to 700 people in attendance. DJing at these precursors of the rave scene he had noted that with so many people crammed together, many of whom were experiencing extreme LSD hallucinations, playing tracks with too many prominent and possibly ambiguous vocals tended to 'mess with peoples heads'. 

He explained how he and a few fellow DJ's got together with two tape decks and set about creating their own rough edits. This largely consisted of recording the intro to a track, pausing the record machine, rewinding the player and playing and recording the intro again. This might be repeated several times before winding on the track past the vocals to the instrumental break. This would again be looped several times. This simple formula formed the basis of a style of music which would eventually grow to maturity some years later when the first sampling machines became available and Goa Trance joined with music which had been similarly engineered in other parts of the world to form one of the many strands that would become dance music.

We have often joked about Paoli's ability to ‘DJ blind’, that is to mix tracks without using the headphones by cleverly and quickly manipulating the EQing of each track, blending them together using the house PA system. Standing by him the other night I was asking him about some of the tracks he was playing. I know that until recently he didn’t have internet in his house so was dependent on sitting in cafes with his laptop to download new tracks. I joked that he must have sat for hours with his headphones on before downloading the new tracks and he remarked that he often downloads them without listening because he knows their lineage and is reasonably confident of what to expect. So, maybe he is the DJ equivalent of The Who’s character, 'That deaf dumb and blind kid’ who played a mean pinball. 

All praise to Paoli who can downloads tracks he has never even heard, and mixes them with no preparation (and without using headphones) to create an endlessly entertaining set full of musical gems!

For my part here is a one of my recent mixes:

Balearic Spring Part 1

Balearic Spring Part 2

A Trip To The Beach

It must have been around 16 years ago that I first visited the island. I had been working in Saudi Arabia for a couple of months and phoned my partner to suggest she book a cheap package tour holiday to leave a couple of days after my return. As we had a friend who had moved to live here a couple of years before this seemed a good opportunity to visit. In truth I had never been on a package holiday before but it seemed like a simple option. We arrived late at night to a hotel, which has since been converted into one of the most desirable up market venues on the island. At the time it was anything but and we arrived around 2am to settle into our cell like room. No problem, we just needed somewhere to lay our heads at night. 

The next morning my partner noted that free breakfast was part of the deal so we made our way to the restaurant. It turned out this was less of a restaurant and more like a works canteen with seating for around 400 people. We joined the queue for deep fried eggs and dried bacon and took our place next to a family of six, two of whom were wearing the latest football shirts and already limbering up for the day by bouncing a ball round the breakfast table. 

Father, whose enormous gut was stretching a more classic football strip, the emblem of which was echoed on the very visible tattoo on his calf, tried to calm his young offspring with a vicious roar of expletives. It was at this point that I remarked that this wasn’t my idea of an ideal holiday breakfast and we opted to leave our half eaten slop and head off to find something better on a nearby beach.

Fortunately, a German friend, hearing that we were headed for 'the white isle, had written some instructions on a Post-it note. The words were: Salinas Beach, Sa Trinxa Bar, DJ Jonathan, The man with the Spanish guitar sells the drugs. As I made my way to that same beach again this year I noted that not much had changed: as weathered gypsy face of the guitarist still smiled from under an umbrella offering some over priced hash.

I must have spent the best part of an hour sitting in the DJ booth before deciding to go for a swim. The sea here is particularly salty and the first intake in my nostrils as I dived in was a shock to the system. But then feeling very relaxed I opted for floating in the limpid sea. If floating was an Olympic event I have no doubt that I would be on the UK team and so was luxuriating in this sport when I noted two young couples jump in off the walkway that leads over the rocks. I took no further notice of them and was intent on floating and stretching my frame when I became away of some sort of conflict going on between one of the couples, who were embracing in the waves. 

I turned to look at them some three yards away and quickly deciphered what was going on. He had just suggested that they make love in the waves where they were (somewhat surrounded by other bathers) The look on her face was one of shock and outrage as I saw her mouthing the complaint that, “everyone can see us.” Then his voice assumed that of a small boy being denied an ice lolly as he pleaded, “But I’ve been dreaming about this.” Ah the collision of romance and reality. 

I turned slightly and glimpsed the other couple who, clearly feeling less inhibited, were giggling as they tried to further entwine themselves while keeping afloat. At this point I decided that this was all a little bit too personal for me. I silently wished them well, climbed back on to the walkway and found my way back to the isolated comfort of my friends DJ booth.

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 ;-)