Is it Balearic?

A recent promo package celebrating 10 years of the excellent MM Discos label landed in my inbox a week or two back. As expected, the tunes were ace – some from artists I knew, others from ones I’ll check out in future. One was from a chap called Nick Brown, working out of Munich, released under the nom de plume Balearic Eric.

I took a moment.

We’ve had Balearic Beats, and since then, off the top of my head I can list Assassins, Blah Blah, Breakfast, Buffin, Burger, Cosmic, Ensemble, Gabba, Jukebox, Militants, Network, Social and Ultras.  And Mike, of course.  

“Is it Balearic?”

Well, you tell me.

I went to hear a DJ crew with a Balearic prefix at a major festival this summer.  Three or four of ‘em playing for a couple of hours to a packed – and I really mean packed – space.  It was a perfectly functional club set but there was nothing, and I mean nothing, Balearic about it in the slightest. If any quote captured what the B-word means the surely that is: “IT’S A FEELING” but increasing numbers of nights, particularly in London and south-east, are now calling themselves ‘Balearic’ when, at best, they’re spinning a couple of records that sit at the cross-section of the Acid House / Balearic Venn diagram, romping along north of 120bpm.

Where are the tempo shifts?  Where are the curveballs?  I reckon it’s time to take the wheels of the bandwagon!

I drew up a rough timeline to see when things ramped up. There was Farley’s Balearic Beats Volume One in 1988 by when the word was already being used with carefree abandon - check the Balearic Beat Remix of Eighth Wonder’s Baby Baby (it’s no J’ai Pas Peur!) or the Balearic Acid and Dub mixes of Vicky Benson’s Easy Love.

MasterCuts’ Classic Balearic Volume One dropped in 1996, which was around the time my pal Mike Smith adopted the prefix; Chris Coco had his Balearica night at The Social around the turn of the century and in 2004 KSAP, Sherman and yours truly nicknamed ourselves Balearic Assassins Of Love on a drunken night behind the decks and haunted us for the next 20 years.  Timm and Ampo’s Is It Balearic? label dropped their first release a year later.  Eskimo sub-label Cosmic Balearic followed in 2008 and then Enzo Amico launched the Balearic Jukebox night in Brighton in 2010. Every few years there was a new one, but never a flurry, not a bombardment. A golden thread ties these together. Each knew of the legacy and lineage, from those Ibiza bars and clubs of the early-mid 80s through to the mixes being shared on the pages of DJ History. Hats were doffed to originators and innovators, and their legacy was built upon, expanding the horizons of what we might call Balearic without compromising what made it special.

Back in 1988 Balearic was an easy way of summing up what ‘those who were there’ have been known to describe as “what was in Alfredo’s Box”. In the legendary spring 88 Boys Own article “Bermondsey goes Baleric” (their misspelling!) the crew described the policy as “NO TRENDYS PLEASE” and wrapped up with a note observing that whilst fashion wasn’t important, attitude was. 

That was then; this is now. It’s become meaningless. The new kids on the block may have something going on but it’s not Balearic: not in origin, not in style, not in attitude. It doesn’t have that feeling. When Phil put out the Make Ibiza Balearic Again tee earlier this year, I knew exactly what he meant. 

Got any Chris Rea?