The Phil-Harmonic Podcast Episode 41

THE IBIZA SPECIALS 2012 PART 5 - SPOTLIGHT ON IBIZA PART 2 - THE SEASON CLOSER

Hola amigos.

First up, you’ll notice the change of colour scheme this week. You may also notice some general spring cleaning of the blog that I’ve been doing this weekend. Meanwhile, I’m slowly creating a secondary blog in the hope of building a brand new RSS feed. All in the interests of freshening things up and clearing away some of the growing mess created by the coming and going of episodes.

If the Phil-Harmonic Podcast has ever had a mission statement it's been to keep its audience, whatever the size, on its collective toes. As much as it helps to have a formula and a degree of familiarity, there's nothing worse than predictability. The last 3 episodes have been very clear in their trance theme, so we're long overdue something unexpected.

And what could be more unexpected this week than a final return, at the very start of autumn, to our Ibiza Specials?

At the start of the year I never envisaged doing 5 Ibiza Specials. If anything, a disproportionate amount of time and effort has gone into these episodes this year, carried on by the euphoria of another trip to clubbing paradise and by a flurry of creative DJing ideas.

But such was the unanticipated buzz created by Spotlight On Ibiza earlier in the summer, my hand has been forced. For once, I'm back by popular demand. When the idea of doing a follow up was suggested to me, at least attempting to repeat the feat seemed like a fitting way to bring down the curtain on another hectic Ibiza season on behalf of my fellow Spotlighters. We are now in October and that curtain falls.

For those that don't remember Spotlight On Ibiza, the basic premise was to pull together the best track suggestions from a music thread on the Ibiza-Spotlight forum - the 'Tracks For 2012' thread. Since posting the original set, the suggestions have continued to roll in and I had plenty of excellent deep house and techno ideas to mold into a new set. And, given that I was pulling from this thread in August and September rather than May, the selections in this week's set are probably marginally more representative of people's holidays - even my own.

I knew starting out with this follow up that I had a real challenge on my hands. I said numerous times after doing Part 1 that this kind of slower house and techno - this traditional Ibizan music - had dragged me right out of my comfort zone. Moreover, by mixing the last one so well I'd set the bar uncomfortably and unnervingly high for myself.

But part of the battle with this fresh attempt was convincing myself that even if it were half as good, earning half the plaudits, it was absolutely worth doing. After all, this episode forms one half of the 2 most difficult DJing challenges I've ever set myself and is as much a marker of how far I've come as how far I've got to go. The road still stretches into the distance, but with a sunrise behind it.

Even with my limited knowledge of this music, there are a number of tunes that stand out in terms of the damage they've done on the White Isle this summer. They are HNQO’s Point Of View on Hot Creations, a label generating a lot of hype and fronting big things at DC10 this season courtesy of Jamie Jones, Flashmob - Need In Me on Defected, which quite frankly has been inescapable this summer and, a tune that contains a lot of Ibiza memories from Pacha for me personally, Federico Scavo’s I Do. ‘Tune Of The Episode’ is the incredible By Your Side by Adriatique.

There's no doubt this effort isn't quite as well mixed as the last, but it's a reasonably solid set with a tracklist that subtly blends some highly contrasting styles of Ibiza music - some stripped down beats, some uplifting 80's synths and some dark, progressive moods. There are some very interesting percussive combinations along the way.

Undoubtedly, it's a set completely untouched by the noisy, big room sounds that are rampaging around clubs worldwide at the moment. Normally, I'm a big pusher of these big room sounds - in fact, as a trance DJ they're exactly what I'm about. But I'm hugely appreciative of this more soulful side now too. Firstly because it shows the world that club music has more than one face, more than one vision, more than one cultural soul. But, more importantly, because this music hasn't lost touch with where dance music began all those years ago. Not to mention, it’s Ibiza's very essence as well.

There is little doubt in my mind that one of the key reasons for me becoming a die-hard trance fan is that, born in 1987, I've been around on this planet for most, if not all, of trance music's existence as an accepted genre. Like a lot of trance fans my age, my life has almost progressed in a weird parallel to it - a freakish chronologically linearage. I've feed my own ideals into it; almost built my own reality out if it. It’s been like a transcendental sibling, a brother, even a twin. As a genre, it couldn't really be any more of my time or era. With house music, things are slightly different.

But one part of maturing in life is fully appreciating that a world existed before you arrived on it, a world that was different to but wholly responsible for the one you exist in today. Not just appreciating, but in actually becoming receptive to, even excited by, that fact. In a very subtle way, musically, this has been part of my own journey, of which Ibiza is inextricably a part.

It seems like an obvious point, but this musical phenomenon that drives me on every day predates me by some significant years, emerging from a world and era that I can only read and hear stories about - like some timeless folk tale. It was a cultural phenomenon at the time too in its infancy for my parents to appreciate; too altered in form and variation by my ‘coming of age’ for me to have really been a part of – sandwiched elusively between two generations of cultural awareness.

The music in this set is that cultural Prime Mover's closest living ancestor. For that reason alone, the occasional foray into this brand of dance music not only seems right but wholly proper.

And on that very poignant note, I give you The Season Closer 2012...

 

THE PHIL-HARMONIC PODCAST EPISODE 042 - THE IBIZA SPECIALS 2012 PART 5

SPOTLIGHT ON IBIZA PART 2 - THE SEASON CLOSER 

1. Finnebassen - Touching Me [Noir Music]

2. Steve Bug - Those Grooves [Poker Flat Recordings]

3. Ben Pearce – What I Might Do [MTA Records]

4. Guy Gerber - One Day In May [Visionquest]

5. Flashmob - Need In Me [Defected]

6. Hot Since 82 - Knee Deep In Louise [Moda Black]

7. Martin Roth - Beautiful Life [Anjunadeep]

8. Lee Curtiss - Body Twitch [Visionquest]

9. Adriatique - By Your Side [Diynamic Music] <<<(Phil’s Tune Of The Episode)>>>

10. HNQO - Point Of View [Hot Creations]

11. &ME - Matters [Saved Records]

12. DJ W!LD - Voyage [Rekids]

13. Monte - True [Jeudi Records]

14. Tom Budden - Patball Elite [Alive Recordings]

15. Samu.l - Innocent [One Records]

16. Bushwacka! - West Side (Christian Smith & Wehbba Remix) [Tronic]

17. Federico Scavo - I Do (Original Club Mix) [Toolroom Records]

18. Alex Kenji & NDKj feat. Marga Sol - Not That Kind Of Girl (Mike Vale Remix) [Hotfingers]

19. Mario Ochoa - Mr. Boom [Avenue Recordings]

20. Jay Lumen - Chicago Milkshake [Big Love Music]

21. ENCORE: Todd Terje - Inspector Norse [Smalltown Supersound]


And I promise – that’s the Ibiza Specials done for 2012. Haven’t even decided whether I will do them at all in 2013… but they will be back some day. Till next time! Viva Ibiza!