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Electric Fling: Sketches From Ibiza Island

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Electric Fling: Sketches From Ibiza Island *A1 “Between Somewhere Beautiful”*

The first face that welcomes me to the island of Ibiza is that of Dutch mega DJ Armin Van Buuren, his teeth as white as the midday sun. As my eyes adjust to the intense light on this strip of land, the third largest of the Balearic Islands, other deputies of Ibiza emerge on massive billboards nearby: Steve Aoki, David Guetta, as well as super clubs like Booom! and Space. Judging by such signage, I could just as easily be in Las Vegas.

The electronic musician I’m looking for at the Ibiza airport is unadvertised. Mark Barrott, who a generation ago made music under the name Future Loop Foundation, has called Ibiza home for the past two years, and he promises to show me a seldom-seen side of the island. A tanned British man with collared shirt, cargo shorts, flip-flops, and wraparound shades, Barrott introduces himself, and soon we are off. As we leave the airport, a billboard promising a neon pleasure dome crowds our vision, and Barrott asks out loud: “What on earth does that have to do with music?” 

No answer will be forthcoming. As Barrott’s car turns away from the central party town of San Antoni, that garish ad will be the last glimpse I have of the Ibiza of popular consciousness—the one that serves as short-hand for hedonism, ketamine, shirtless lobster-skinned kids on holiday, Molly, foam parties, Eurotrash cheesiness, and the incessant thudding of trance and EDM. Instead, the Ibiza I will experience over the next 48 hours is one of blissed-out quietude and relaxation. It will be the one that seems most like a dream when I try to explain it to incredulous friends back home.

For the past five years, Barrott has operated the boutique dance music imprint International Feel, which has released music pressed to heavyweight vinyl in limited editions from an eclectic assortment of producers like DJ Harvey, Gatto Fritto, Japanese DJ Gonno, and the Quiet Village side project Maxxi & Zeus. (Most of these tracks were compiled in the handy two-disc label overview, A Compilation, in 2012.) “Putting out the comp was also a line in the sand to give me some breathing space to decide what’s next,” Barrott tells me. 

International Feel doubles as Barrott’s own vanity label, where he has released music under a dizzying array of pseudonyms: Rocha, Efeel, the Sonic Aesthetic, Bepu N’Gali, Parada 88, Boys From Patagonia, Young Gentlemen’s Adventure Society. The label specializes in nu-disco, but also highlights minimal techno, expansive ambient, dubby Afrobeat, house, disco, and more. Or, to summarize the sound in one word: Balearic.

At the moment, traces of Balearic are re-appearing in dance music: Tensnake’s “Things Left to Say”, Todd Terje’s It’s Album Time, DJ Koze’s remix of Mount Kimbie’s “Made to Stray”, the recent two-disc Is It Balearic? comp, new artists like Tornado Wallace and Tommy Awards, to name a few. I would say Balearic was having a moment, but that would imply it went away, when in fact Balearic came and never left. It may be overshadowed by billboards of current trends, but the spirit remains intact. 

Balearic can mean many things to many people. To an American who has never ventured to these storied islands, it might mean a certain type of featherweight dance music that can’t seem decide if it’s synth pop, faux reggae, lounge, ambient, lite jazz, or acid house. But to those who have tasted the fruit of Ibiza, Balearic gloriously means all of the above. “Balearic by its very nature is about three things: melody, counter-culture, and proper personal freedom and individuality,” Barrott says as we drive, “and that defines my whole life.” 

The 46-year-old producer was born and raised in Sheffield, in “a working class neighborhood that had two main industries: steel and coal-mining.” He came of age when the Human League were on the pop charts, and Cabaret Voltaire’s Richard Kirk and Stephen Mallinder were driving around the city center blasting their music out of the back of a van. He took piano lessons, and music quickly became paramount in his life. Inspired by the likes of A Guy Called Gerald and early Warp releases, he began making tracks as Future Loop Foundation in the late 1990s. When that project ran its course, Barrott and his wife Sara traveled from country to country, spending time in Berlin and Milan before striking out for Uruguay, then Ibiza. “Everything that Sara and I own fits in two suitcases,” he says. 

With the cafés and boutiques soon giving way to open spaces, we drive out to the house he and his wife rent, turning down a road that leads past vineyards. “I prefer the quiet of the countryside to going clubbing,” he tells me. “All I can hear out here is birdsong.”

*A2 “Sunshine Philosophy”*

You can hear those birds on “Sacred Islands”, set at the end of Barrott’s new album, Sketches From an Island. The record was made during a creative outburst and rendered on the simplest of set-ups: MBP running Abelton 8 with some plugins and a little keyboard. The album ranges from the slinky funk of opener “Baby Come Home”, to the kora-laced “Go Berri Be Happy”, to the back half’s more winsome and ethereal moments. The CD sticker promises “Music From Ibiza,” and while listening to it in the city feels relaxing, hearing it at the source makes its melodies all the more resonant.

Barrott’s wife prepares a vegan meal for us. At dinner, she tells me that while the tourist industry of Ibiza focuses on clubbing, there’s a groundswell of visitors who now come for health reasons. The club kids from Germany, England, and elsewhere who ventured to the island in their teens and 20s to dose on MDMA now return in their 30s for detoxing, ayurvedic massages, and organic meals. She gives me a recipe for making my own oat cakes.

As the sun sets over the hills, Barrott tells me how they wound up here. While in Milan, he began a small music-consulting gig for a nearby hotel. But what started with one client soon exploded. “I put my hand up for being the guy that put chill-out shit out in every fancy boutique hotel around the world,” he says with a shit-eating grin. “It was a total accident.” 

With Barrott traveling the globe for his clients, his own music was put on the shelf. “I was taking on average three-to-four long-haul flights a week, 50 weeks a year—today, that business turns over 20 million [Euros] a year and employs 60 people,” he says, calling it a velvet prison. Barrott knew it was time to sell his company when a Chicago client denied him access to their executive club because he wouldn’t wear closed-toe shoes at dinner. (He prefers to wear flip-flops year-round.) 

The couple decided to get away from it all and relocated to Uruguay. While driving up the South American coastline, Barrott had an epiphany about Balearic music and began to feel inspired once more. “We were waiting for the shipping container to arrive and I wrote the first Rocha single, called ‘Hands of Love’,” he says. But he became frustrated trying to find a label to release it, so he took matters into his own hands, starting International Feel and setting the aesthetic for the limited edition imprint: “I wanted it to be bespoke with hand-drawn art and 180 gram vinyl.”

Barrott is an enthusiastic individual, speaking with great zeal about the music industry, the artists he is fortunate to work with, and how he perceives life here. In conversation, he worries that he uses the words “majorative” and “confluence” too often to describe things. He came to Ibiza originally to deal with a nerve disorder that no doctor in Uruguay or England could properly diagnose. When he learned that his diagnoses of multiple sclerosis and/or psychosis were at their root due to a B-12 deficiency, he “became a world expert in B-12 to the point where, just before I left Uruguay, I was advising their leading neurologist,” he says. “I know as much about B-12 now as I do about synthesizers.” 

The stars are in full array in the night sky while Barrott plays many classic Balearic tunes for me: Carly Simon’s “Why”; House of House’s “The Rough Half (Don’t Stop)”; Cocteau Twins’ “Pandora”; Art of Noise’s “Moments in Love”; Sabres of Paradise’s “Smokeless Blech II”; Andreas Vollenweider, Chris Rea, Larry Heard. As I leave, he hands me a copy of Stephen Armstrong’s book on Ibiza, The White Island.

A view of the uninhabited island of Es Vedrà from the beaches of Ibiza. Photo by Andy Beta.

*B1 “Tanit”*

The next morning, I’m to meet José Padilla, one of the fathers of the Ibiza sound. I peruse The White Island beforehand and one passage strikes me. It’s about Tanit, the Carthaginian goddess of Love and War, holding an axe in one hand, her pendulous breasts with the other:



"Deep in the foundations of Ibiza’s towering cathedral—dedicated to Santa Maria de las Neus, or Mary of the Snows, the patron saint of an island with over three hundred days of unbroken sunshine a year—a dark history lurks. The cathedral was imposed on the ruins of Ibiza’s largest mosque by victorious Catalan Christians… Beneath the fragments of the mosque that remain lies the dust of a Roman temple to Mercury… and beneath that ancient site lies a Carthaginian temple of unknown provenance that belongs to Tanit."



Balearic speaks to a certain state of mind that’s on holiday from the strain and chilly climes of life on the continent—a mind slightly melted from the Mediterranean sun, a few glasses of wine, and, what the hell, a tab of E. Starting in the mid-1970s to early 1980s, Ibiza was where many Europeans came to escape. What codified Balearic music at the start were the sets of two DJs who were as important to dance music here as Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles were in the U.S.: Alfredo Fiorito at Amnesia and José Padilla at Café del Mar. They were tasked with playing 10-hour sets starting in the day and stretching to the end of the night. 

Filling a 10-hour set is no easy task, and the omnivorous appetite of these two DJs fed into what would ultimately define Balearic. If it sounded good and fit the mood—be it at 3 p.m., sunset, or 3 a.m., it worked. Drums need not be thundering; they could instead pad like raindrops on a broad leaf. “The Drop” is eschewed in favor of the weightless lift. While disco, house, or trance might take an existing hit and re-purpose it in its own image, Balearic revels in pop’s inherent cheesiness. In much the same manner that Harry Smith soundtracked his Early Abstractions films with the first Beatles album, there’s an epiphany to be found in pop. And in the hands of Fiorito and Padilla, pop pabulum could turn into a psychedelic pill. Too slick, too cheesy hits—ranging from Nena’s “99 Luftballoons” and Double’s “The Captain of Her Heart”, to Duran Duran’s “Save a Prayer” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Big Love”—could transform into ecstatic moments if deployed at the right moment on the beaches of Ibiza.

Following Danny Rampling, Paul Oakenfold, and Nicky Holloway’s MDMA epiphany on Fiorito’s dancefloor in 1987 (which served as “ground zero” for England’s subsequent embrace of electronic music), Padilla is responsible for the subsequent exporting of Ibizan “chill-out” music, not that it was like that in the early years. But as the music exploded, Padilla helmed a series of influential (if increasingly pillow-soft) Café del Mar compilations, before he and the club parted ways in the late ‘90s. But after many years away, this summer marks the prodigal son’s return: He once again has a residency at Café del Mar. He’s also returned to producing music, with a classic-sounding single “Solito” released on International Feel this month. 

As Barrott and I drive to Padilla’s home, a winding road reveals hillsides of red dirt, tall grass, and knotted trees. There are stacked-stone walls and brief vistas of the Mediterranean Sea shining in the distance. Padilla welcomes us to his house, situating us in a palm-shaded veranda, and offers us iced tea. Later, he will show me his record room, which spills throughout the abode. He enthusiastically plays Mahvishnu Orchestra, Afrobeat, a new ILO edit, and the chill-out classic “Smokeless Blech II (Beatless Mix)”, which appeared on his first Café del Mar compilation. In the first year Padilla was at Café del Mar, he tells me, the DJ booth was set next to the espresso machine: “I was also serving coffee in addition to DJing.” 

José Padilla at home. Photo by Andy Beta.

He enthuses about making new music with Barrott, both with the new single and an upcoming album. “Music is the thing I do best with my life,” he says. “Is there anything else other than the power and the love of the music?” 

“I work in my living room,” Barrott says. “I think music is part of life and I don't want to work in a studio with no windows and no cats running around! You need light. You need to make a tea. You need to have a smoke.” Padilla agrees: “It’s Balearic. I don't know if we can do the same music in the basement.”

Sunset is a singular time on the island, a sacred occasion. For his most recent set at Café del Mar, Padilla enthused about playing Chromatics right as day turned to night. There’s a home video shot on the island in August of 1992 that takes in the sea and the wedding cake-like décor of Café del Mar. As the sun slides into the ocean, one can not just hear but feel Padilla’s mastery: the hand drums, the gentle arpeggios, the chiming bells—it all feels ritualistic. The erotic charge of day turning into night is thick in the air as the ocean gulps down the glowing tablet of sun.

Later that night, I think back to the passage about Tanit as I sit out under the night sky, stars visible next to a new moon. I can hear music in the distance. It’s the sound of a foreign female voice in the dark, a gentle wordless wail that just reaches me. I’d like to think it’s a paean to this goddess, her temples built and buried over the eons, yet still a presence on the White Island. The kick drum cuts through the distance and, in that instant, the voice clarifies: It’s Donna Summer purring “Love to Love You Baby”. Reported by Pitchfork 5 hours ago.

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