Ibiza's 2014 Season: Where Worlds Collide

On the surface 2013 was the year that Ibiza embraced the heady possibilities of pushing dance music’s underground into the spotlight. Pacha Ibiza famously ditched its EDM residents replacing them with Solomun and Guy Gerber who became the face of the so-called movement on the island, which saw a swathe of medium-tier acts and record labels granted season-long residencies.

The reality turned out to be a tad different to this grand notion, though. While the established techno superstars only further entrenched their unstoppable dominance, countless others failed to make it to the end of the season in one piece, with Solomun the only of Pacha’s experiments to return for a second round in 2014. Meanwhile, much to everybody’s dismay and bemusement, Paris Hilton was slaying the crowds at a packed Amnesia residency.

“...If I want to make an underground party, I can do it in my garage with a few friends; Ushuaïa is a business....”

2014 was the year that mass-market EDM returned to Ibiza with a vengeance. Steve Aoki sauntered in to replace Gerber’s vaunted residency at Pacha, and while superclub Ushuaïahad earned a certain mythos by granting a grandiose beachside setting to house and techno luminaries like Luciano, Loco Diceand Sasha, this year it was full-steam ahead with an EDM-packed schedule featuring David Guetta, Avicii, Hardwell, Armin van Buuren, Axwell and Ingrosso. Not to mention a hotel-package experience resembling the glitz n’ glam of Vegas on the other side of the world, which has given Ibiza a run for its money in the VIP stakes.   

In August The Guardian visited Ibiza to talk to Yann Pissenem, founder of Ushuaïa. “We thought this ‘underground year’ was happening and it was not the case,” he said of 2013, and the subsequent change of tack. “If I want to make an underground party, I can do it in my garage with a few friends; Ushuaïa is a business.”

A rather evocative picture is painted; “As I walk around Pissenem’s vision of an amusement park for adults, early-20s ravers fringe the pool while sugar daddies relax with premium vodka in ice buckets, as Armin van Buuren plays a trance remix of ‘Let It Go’ from ‘Frozen’.”

Changes on the islandCocoon Ibiza is one such longrunning club conscious of these changes the most. Head promoter Johannes Goller previously described 2011 as the strongest season yet in their entire 15-year history on the Island; interestingly enough, it now actually faces its strongest competition from previous residents Richie Hawtin and Marco Corola, who now front the two most successful nights on the island; even in the face of the EDM goliaths. 

In spite of this, Cocoon enjoyed consistent crowds for its celebratory 15th season. Speaking to DJBroadcast prior to the season start, Goller spoke on the big-picture changes he’s seen; in an environment where the old-school and new-school Ibizan experiences are oddly coexisting.

"...Ibiza is changing for sure. It’ll never be quite the same as the old-school experience...."

“New venues have appeared, and with them, another element of the clubbing experience has opened in Ibiza. The Ushuaïa daytime events, which is part of a hotel… that’s more the sort of concept you’d see in Vegas or Miami. Coming with this is the whole US clubbing culture, which doesn’t have a lot to do with what you saw on the island before the peak in 2011. It’s changed the way people consume parties in Ibiza. It’s neither good nor bad, it’s just not for us.”

BBC1 veteran Pete Tong also returned to Ibiza early in the season (after sneaking out early in 2013 for his relocation to the shiny lights of US dance culture). This year it was without his own residency, but instead to mentor 18 aspiring DJs as part of the annual Burn Residency programme. DJBroadcast caught him shortly before he performed a sundown set at Café Mambo alongside his aspirants, for some typically insightful commentary.

“The influence is definitely bouncing around,” he said of the US experience that was being exported back to Ibiza. “You have a global market now that is creating such a huge audience, with so many events, and the money is really there for the DJs. It’s harder to get DJs to come through here now. Fortunately for Ibiza though, when you look at Ushuaïa and see Armin, Avicii, Guetta and the Swedes, they obviously still think that Ibiza is important. But I think it’s gonna get harder.

“And Ibiza is changing for sure. It’ll never be quite the same as the old-school experience. People might hate me saying that, but that’s what happens, things evolve. But I think now, it feels like the changes are even more radical, with all the high-end tourism and investment that is coming into the island. Ibiza kind of needed that.”

Tong paints the glitzy, high-end developments in the island’s Playa Den Bossa district of the island as the sort of development that eluded San Antonio, home to Café Mambo.

"...We now have a new generation that almost expects that experience when they go on holiday..."

“When I was doing my ‘Wonderland’ residency here, and trying to reinvent San Antonio, it was frustrating that although the will was with me, the money wasn’t really there. Playa Den Bossa has got exactly the kind of investment now that we were crying out here for five or six years ago. And now when you look outside of Space and look across the road to the Ushuaïa, the Ushuaïa Tower and the Hard Rock Café, it’s insane. And all the restaurants that are opening down at the sand, it’s looking like a little Miami South Beach. San Antonio could have had that.”

Carl Cox also returned to his old stomping grounds this year, both to join the Burn Residency programme as a mentor, and for his longrunning 'Music Is Revolution' residency at Space. The parties ran for 14 weeks for the very first time, staffed by an EDM-free roster stacked with the likes of Laurent Garnier, Adam Beyer and Mano Le Tough as guests. And in spite of Hardwell performing at Ushuaïa next door and facing more competition than ever before, Cox reportedly enjoyed one of Space’s busiest nights for the season, approaching even the numbers of ENTER.   

“I think the commercial side has grown more than last year, and more than the year before that,” Cox told DJBroadcast. “We now have a new generation that almost expects that experience when they go on holiday, and they want that type of entertainment, they want that exciting hotel. It’s new, it’s fresh, and nobody really knows exactly how long it’s going to last. Nobody could have expected that it was going to go this way, but it has. But when Ushuaïa opened as a true concept hotel, with such an amazing open-air venue, that was exciting for everyone.”

Eschewing the VIPThe flipside to last year’s oversaturation of house and techno’s talent being spread far too thin across the Island, was promoters closing ranks somewhat and looking for an alternative to the VIP culture that is arguably out of control on the island.

Cocoon heavyweight Sven Väth had the nerve to speak out at the IMS Conference last year on what has become such a big factor at clubs like Amnesia, as well as Ushuaïa, Pacha and beyond.

“When we started, our VIP was always empty. There was no VIP. There was maybe one or two tables, so it was there for people who enjoyed a bottle of champagne. That’s fair enough, why not? But then after all these years, we could see more and more VIPs. But who is really important? I remember Pacha in the ‘80s, and I can see after all these years the VIP growing and growing and the dancefloor shrinking. I was wondering, is this really the right direction?”

Canny operators have spotted a demand for parties outside the VIP culture, which are a galaxy away from the excesses of Ushuaïa. It’s telling that while in 2013 Guy Gerber attempted his extravagant ‘Wisdom of the Glove’ night at Pacha (with its titular $150,000 bejewelled glove), this year he threw his ‘Rumours’ party at the rather more lowkey Plan Be beachside bar. Anja Schneider took a similar approach when she finally brought her Mobilee brand to Ibiza.

“...I often wonder how the people in Ibiza even tolerate this…"

“We’ve had a lot of offers before, but it wasn’t for me, we never felt comfortable. We’re not about this whole VIP, superstar kind of brand… it was not feeling right,” she told DJBroadcast shortly before her ‘Mobilee Pool’ party opened at Santos. “We’ve thrown some really successful parties in Barcelona, we had a really special atmosphere there, and we didn’t want to disturb this. We want to try to create that too in Ibiza. So it took a long time to be able to find somewhere where we were able to do this. We’re working with a venue where the entrance is free, and there are no VIP tables, so it looks like we can maybe create this special feeling there.”

For Scheider, the cashed-up Ibizan culture is a million miles away from the somewhat more utilitarian and affordable scene of her hometown of Berlin.

“I often wonder how the people in Ibiza even tolerate this… In the ‘90s there was a status around buying a big car when you’re growing older… Nowadays it’s all about having to go for five days to Ibiza, and to take as many photos as possible, and to put them on your Facebook because this means you’re a big player [laughs]. I feel really different about Ibiza. I don’t like this, because I’m still coming from this underground scene, and I hate this whole VIP table thing, where you pay 1000 euros for a bottle of vodka. I don’t like this. It’s a very commercial business nowadays. But of course there is still this very special feeling on the island… and I have the feeling we’ll be seeing some more of these free underground daytime parties.”

And the new Ibiza is… IbizaAnd in spite of the huge competition it’s now facing, from Las Vegas on the glitzier VIP end of things plus Croatia for its stacked selection of underground festivals in divine Mediterranean settings, in the face of all this Ibiza has barely lost any of its cultural clout. It was a topic broached at Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) last year by Ben Turner, owner and director of Graphite Media in London, the artist management company responsible for representing Richie Hawtin among others.

“If you get it right, there’s nowhere in the word that can impact like Ibiza. Nowhere in Vegas yet has the same ripple effect to the rest of the world, like the way you can have a ripple effect on your career on the rest of the world.”