Like a child with a toy, or a London urbanite on a crawl around Shoreditch, Ibiza is equally as obsessed with the new, the next big thing. Each year, fresh objects of desire are created by hopeful businessmen, artists & entrepreneurs. To be devoured by the locals, holiday makers, international jet set & the party crowd.
This year there have been many new entrants to the Ibiza club market. Nights like Richie Hawtin's "Enter", Pooldisco @ Ushuaia (itself only 2 years old!), to the 123 Festival with Elton John & Sting popping by to headline. As obsessed as we all are with shiny new disco balls, some of the best nights so far have been by created by the original pioneers, not their fresh faced apprentices.
I spoke to one of Augmented Ibiza's "Insiders", Colin Peters (Resident DJ @ Ibiza Rocks, Rock Nights @ Privilege), himself a bit of an Ibiza veteran, who started off by DJ'ing in the toilets at Manumission. Don't you just love the DJ career path!! This is what Colin had to say about one of the best nights on the island this Summer:
"Although Carl Cox is celebrating 10 years of Revolution parties at I have to admit this is my first visit to his party. There was only one reason I wanted to go as well, or may be that should be two reasons: 'Little' Louie Vega and Kenny 'Dope' Gonzalez (MAW).
This duo of DJs, producers and remixers have had people in thrall to their music for the last 20 years. Their productions cover latin, disco, jazz, funk, house and garage under the MAW moniker and various side projects. They have remixed artists that include Michael Jackson, Madonna, Bjork, Donna Summer and Jamiroquai. To celebrate this 20th anniversary they announced that they would be doing seven DJ shows in 2012. What adds more salsa to this story, is the fact that they haven't been best buddies for the last couple of years, and have worked separately since 2007.
I arrived at Space around an hour and a half before Masters at Work came on. So I went straight to the El Salon room where Vinyl Frontier where mixing, funnily enough, with just vinyl, which is an oddity in this day and age of CDs and computers. Their set was a pleasing blend of funk and 90s disco house. Highlights where Black Science Orchestra - New Jersey Deep and Laidback - White Horse. After warming my legs up in El Salon I nipped over to the Sunset Terrace where record label Future Disco hold court each week with its brand of modern disco. On the decks were Sean Brosnan and Marco Loco, connecting the dots between 70's stuff (Chic, The Doobie Brothers, Anita Ward) questionable 90's samples (Corona - Rhythm of the Night) and nu disco to an appreciative crowd.
With this warm up over I went over to the Terraza room, where Masters at Work started at 3.30 am. They started off with a few chunky house numbers from the last couple of years, including Ray Foxx - The Trumpeter before dipping into their extensive back catalogue. Tracks such as: "To Be In Love", "Backfire" and "Work" were woven around deep, latin house to a packed Terraza.
The quality of the music was astonishing, and you realised at that moment they were pioneers in many areas of dance music, including the deep house / garage sound that is popular with producers such as Disclosure, Julio Bashmore and SBTRKT. A particular highlight was Louie's collaboration with Erick Morillo from 1995: Lil' Mo' Ying Yang - "Reach". It's hard to believe this thunderbolt of a track is 17 years old already because it got the biggest reaction of the night. The quality did not dip for one moment, as the dynamic duo kept the faith with their music and all time classics from Lil Louis, Donna Summer and Inner City. We even had a special unannounced guest in form of Barbara Tucker and she preceded freestyle to sing over the music including her collaborations with MAW - "Deep Inside" and Beautiful People.
They may have gone their separate paths over the last couple of years but there is no doubt that they are still the Masters at Work."
Colin's trip to Space was on the 31st July 2012.
The next Revolution @ Space is Tuesday 4 September with Carl Cox, Yousef, & Laurent Garnier