McRackin
Super Moderator
Why Ibiza is dancing to a different tune
(Filed: 13/08/2005)
Rock bands in Ibiza? It's an unlikely scenario - but club owners think the island needs a shake-up. David Cheal reports
Earlier this summer I found myself in a club in Ibiza on a sticky Friday night at around 3am pounding the dancefloor in a state of near-ecstasy. Before you ask, drugs were not involved; I'd only had a few drinks. So what kind of music was responsible for inducing this condition of transcendent delirium?
Was it some kind of deep throbbing house, or techno-trance, or techno-house, or happy hardcore, or Balearic breakbeat, or another of the apparently infinite varieties of dance music being played across the island this year? No, indeed: it was Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix. And no, this wasn't some souped-up remix: this was the original, untouched version, from 1967.
The man at the turntables, Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe, was punching the air triumphantly to Hendrix's juddering riff. Around me, hundreds of (mostly young) clubbers were doing likewise. It was bliss, and it was not what you might expect from a night out on an island where dance has been the hegemonic musical medium for two decades.
I was witnessing the official opening night of Ibiza Rocks, a new project launched by Manumission, one of the island's leading club nights. And Zane Lowe' s stint on the decks was only part of the experience, because in the course of the night we also witnessed live performances from two bands, Fischerspooner and Maximo Park. Guitar bands in Ibiza? What in the Balearics is going on?
"The time is right," says Andy McKay, co-founder of Manumission, now an Ibizan resident, and a man whose eyes burn bright with a fierce envangelical light when he talks about what he calls this "bastard son", born of a fusion between two cultures, rock and dance. "We have to accept that there is a side of Ibiza that's a little bit stale. It does need reinvigoration. I know that if Ibiza is to retain the ridiculous level of success that it's currently got, it has to embrace live music. There are new young bands out there in the UK who can sell more tickets than the biggest DJ on the planet."
This summer a total of 30 bands have been booked for the Ibiza Rocks season, among them Babyshambles (who played earlier in the summer), the Futureheads (who were due to play last night), Audio Bullys, the Rakes, the Kaiser Chiefs, Mylo, Skin (formerly of Skunk Anansie) and the Bravery. The aim is to begin on a modest scale: the bands are appearing in the 700-capacity Music Box room at the gigantic 10,000-capacity Privilege nightclub, which hosts Manumission's club nights, rather than on the main stage. Bigger stuff is promised for next year.
The concept of putting live music into clubs in Ibiza is not, it has to be said, a newly-minted one: for the past three years, Manumission have been putting acts such as Har Mar Superstar and LCD Soundsystem on stage in the Music Box. But this year they have launched it as a "brand", attracted a big-name sponsor (mobile-phone maker Sony Ericsson), and brought in the Barfly, the British music venue chain and promotional outfit, for their expertise in promoting new music.
Be Rozzo, managing director of Barfly Promotions, agrees with McKay that Ibiza needs a bit of a shake-up. "There's a sense that this island's been doing the same thing for 10 years. It's a great place. But why not do something different? And guitar music is very much on the up at the moment. There's no reason why people can't appreciate that music in an environment that's as fantastic as this. Why should it be reserved purely for people who want to hear dance music?"
Rozzo adds that Ibiza Rocks fits into a "culture shift" that has been taking place in the way people experience music. Most people of a certain age are accustomed to the notion of live music being the focal point of an evening's entertainment: you go out, you watch a band or two, you go home again. But, says Rozzo: "Eighteen- to 25-year-olds are going to club nights that feature bands as part of the night. Here we've got an amazing opportunity to crank that up a few notches."
And it's not just British pop-pickers who are the target market. "When you go to Barcelona to the Razzmatazz club," says McKay, "and you see two and a half thousand kids dancing to a soundtrack of the Kaiser Chiefs and the Bravery and Bloc Party and early Duran Duran, and you ask them how long they've been doing it and they say for ever, you realise that there's a whole market that is as big as the dance market. Why aren't they coming to Ibiza? It's because the music's not here."
McKay acknowledges that there is a "core" element to Ibiza's dance culture who will be horrified by the encroachment of these scuzzy guitar types. "There's an age group who grew up in narrow dance culture and don't really know anything else," he says.
"Change always ruffles feathers. But to us, nothing is sacred. This is going to be good for us, good for the island."
So how does the actual experience measure up? On the night I was there, there was a mounting air of excitement during the build-up to the appearance of Fischerspooner, who are acting as Manumission's house band over the summer. In their rococo white costumes, and led by the faintly absurd, plainly sweltering but endearingly camp figure of Casey Spooner, they played a short, sharp set that was surprisingly well executed for a band whose live shows were once mimed in their entirety. Then came the bit with Purple Haze.
Zane Lowe also whipped up the crowd into a lather of excitement by playing Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. "Ibiza, we are making history here," proclaimed Lowe, perhaps a little hysterically.
The night's headlining attraction was Maximo Park, the Mercury Prize-nominated five-piece band from the north-east, who, despite coming on at 4am, looked fresh, energetic, wide-eyed, and played their spiky, poppy, catchy set with skill and commitment - with lead singer Paul Smith, his strange combover hairstyle remaining remarkably intact, doing some nifty scissor-kicks. They played for about an hour and, although not rapturously received, kept the room full and kept the crowd's attention.
There was more to come. As soon as they had exited, at around 5am, sensing a lull in the room's energy levels, Zane Lowe spun Franz Ferdinand's Take Me Out. It was a fabulous moment, one that prompted an outbreak of massed jumpalong-singalong exuberance from the crowd which was extraordinary to behold.
Rozzo was there too. "I just looked out and I said, I cannot believe I'm watching a room full of people in Ibiza jumping up and down in unison to Franz Ferdinand. This is it. This is brilliant."
For Maximo Park, it was, as lead singer Smith later told me, a new and perhaps more challenging experience. "Four o'clock in the morning isn't my preferred time to go on stage," he said, relaxing the next day at the villa which has been booked for all the bands. "And for us on stage it was quite tricky.
There was a hard core at the front, people who knew the words and had obviously bought the album, but the rest of the room was filled with people in various different states of mind. You're used to people either really enjoying what you do or a bit of antipathy, but last night's audience were just taking it in without really committing themselves."
Nevertheless, Smith is convinced that the world is ready for Ibiza Rocks. "It was inevitable that a night like this would start up because of the resurgence in live music," he says. "That's what attracts me to live music - it's being in the moment, everything's about the moment, life's about the moment, so it makes a lot of sense that these occasions where the moment can be felt more keenly should come to the fore again.
"There's a cycle where dance music comes round and then guitar music comes back, but it's all about the same thing, really. It's all about people in a room with a rhythm."
telegraph.co.uk
Purple haze all in my brain
Lately things just don't seem the same
Actin' funny, but I don't know why
'Scuse me while I kiss the sky
(Filed: 13/08/2005)
Rock bands in Ibiza? It's an unlikely scenario - but club owners think the island needs a shake-up. David Cheal reports
Earlier this summer I found myself in a club in Ibiza on a sticky Friday night at around 3am pounding the dancefloor in a state of near-ecstasy. Before you ask, drugs were not involved; I'd only had a few drinks. So what kind of music was responsible for inducing this condition of transcendent delirium?
Was it some kind of deep throbbing house, or techno-trance, or techno-house, or happy hardcore, or Balearic breakbeat, or another of the apparently infinite varieties of dance music being played across the island this year? No, indeed: it was Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix. And no, this wasn't some souped-up remix: this was the original, untouched version, from 1967.
The man at the turntables, Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe, was punching the air triumphantly to Hendrix's juddering riff. Around me, hundreds of (mostly young) clubbers were doing likewise. It was bliss, and it was not what you might expect from a night out on an island where dance has been the hegemonic musical medium for two decades.
I was witnessing the official opening night of Ibiza Rocks, a new project launched by Manumission, one of the island's leading club nights. And Zane Lowe' s stint on the decks was only part of the experience, because in the course of the night we also witnessed live performances from two bands, Fischerspooner and Maximo Park. Guitar bands in Ibiza? What in the Balearics is going on?
"The time is right," says Andy McKay, co-founder of Manumission, now an Ibizan resident, and a man whose eyes burn bright with a fierce envangelical light when he talks about what he calls this "bastard son", born of a fusion between two cultures, rock and dance. "We have to accept that there is a side of Ibiza that's a little bit stale. It does need reinvigoration. I know that if Ibiza is to retain the ridiculous level of success that it's currently got, it has to embrace live music. There are new young bands out there in the UK who can sell more tickets than the biggest DJ on the planet."
This summer a total of 30 bands have been booked for the Ibiza Rocks season, among them Babyshambles (who played earlier in the summer), the Futureheads (who were due to play last night), Audio Bullys, the Rakes, the Kaiser Chiefs, Mylo, Skin (formerly of Skunk Anansie) and the Bravery. The aim is to begin on a modest scale: the bands are appearing in the 700-capacity Music Box room at the gigantic 10,000-capacity Privilege nightclub, which hosts Manumission's club nights, rather than on the main stage. Bigger stuff is promised for next year.
The concept of putting live music into clubs in Ibiza is not, it has to be said, a newly-minted one: for the past three years, Manumission have been putting acts such as Har Mar Superstar and LCD Soundsystem on stage in the Music Box. But this year they have launched it as a "brand", attracted a big-name sponsor (mobile-phone maker Sony Ericsson), and brought in the Barfly, the British music venue chain and promotional outfit, for their expertise in promoting new music.
Be Rozzo, managing director of Barfly Promotions, agrees with McKay that Ibiza needs a bit of a shake-up. "There's a sense that this island's been doing the same thing for 10 years. It's a great place. But why not do something different? And guitar music is very much on the up at the moment. There's no reason why people can't appreciate that music in an environment that's as fantastic as this. Why should it be reserved purely for people who want to hear dance music?"
Rozzo adds that Ibiza Rocks fits into a "culture shift" that has been taking place in the way people experience music. Most people of a certain age are accustomed to the notion of live music being the focal point of an evening's entertainment: you go out, you watch a band or two, you go home again. But, says Rozzo: "Eighteen- to 25-year-olds are going to club nights that feature bands as part of the night. Here we've got an amazing opportunity to crank that up a few notches."
And it's not just British pop-pickers who are the target market. "When you go to Barcelona to the Razzmatazz club," says McKay, "and you see two and a half thousand kids dancing to a soundtrack of the Kaiser Chiefs and the Bravery and Bloc Party and early Duran Duran, and you ask them how long they've been doing it and they say for ever, you realise that there's a whole market that is as big as the dance market. Why aren't they coming to Ibiza? It's because the music's not here."
McKay acknowledges that there is a "core" element to Ibiza's dance culture who will be horrified by the encroachment of these scuzzy guitar types. "There's an age group who grew up in narrow dance culture and don't really know anything else," he says.
"Change always ruffles feathers. But to us, nothing is sacred. This is going to be good for us, good for the island." So how does the actual experience measure up? On the night I was there, there was a mounting air of excitement during the build-up to the appearance of Fischerspooner, who are acting as Manumission's house band over the summer. In their rococo white costumes, and led by the faintly absurd, plainly sweltering but endearingly camp figure of Casey Spooner, they played a short, sharp set that was surprisingly well executed for a band whose live shows were once mimed in their entirety. Then came the bit with Purple Haze.
Zane Lowe also whipped up the crowd into a lather of excitement by playing Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. "Ibiza, we are making history here," proclaimed Lowe, perhaps a little hysterically.
The night's headlining attraction was Maximo Park, the Mercury Prize-nominated five-piece band from the north-east, who, despite coming on at 4am, looked fresh, energetic, wide-eyed, and played their spiky, poppy, catchy set with skill and commitment - with lead singer Paul Smith, his strange combover hairstyle remaining remarkably intact, doing some nifty scissor-kicks. They played for about an hour and, although not rapturously received, kept the room full and kept the crowd's attention.
There was more to come. As soon as they had exited, at around 5am, sensing a lull in the room's energy levels, Zane Lowe spun Franz Ferdinand's Take Me Out. It was a fabulous moment, one that prompted an outbreak of massed jumpalong-singalong exuberance from the crowd which was extraordinary to behold.
Rozzo was there too. "I just looked out and I said, I cannot believe I'm watching a room full of people in Ibiza jumping up and down in unison to Franz Ferdinand. This is it. This is brilliant."
For Maximo Park, it was, as lead singer Smith later told me, a new and perhaps more challenging experience. "Four o'clock in the morning isn't my preferred time to go on stage," he said, relaxing the next day at the villa which has been booked for all the bands. "And for us on stage it was quite tricky.
There was a hard core at the front, people who knew the words and had obviously bought the album, but the rest of the room was filled with people in various different states of mind. You're used to people either really enjoying what you do or a bit of antipathy, but last night's audience were just taking it in without really committing themselves."
Nevertheless, Smith is convinced that the world is ready for Ibiza Rocks. "It was inevitable that a night like this would start up because of the resurgence in live music," he says. "That's what attracts me to live music - it's being in the moment, everything's about the moment, life's about the moment, so it makes a lot of sense that these occasions where the moment can be felt more keenly should come to the fore again.
"There's a cycle where dance music comes round and then guitar music comes back, but it's all about the same thing, really. It's all about people in a room with a rhythm."
telegraph.co.uk
Purple haze all in my brain
Lately things just don't seem the same
Actin' funny, but I don't know why
'Scuse me while I kiss the sky
