It is without doubt incredibly difficult to program a closing party that would do justice to the series of events that We Love have put together over the course of the 2011 Ibiza season. There are few clubs in the world where there is space to attempt to get all bases covered music wise. Fortunately, Space is one of those places boasting 6 unique areas… all with their own identity allowing them to have entirely different vibes.
If I'm honest, it wasn't my favourite lineup. Far from it in fact. The opening party, Innerversions showcase, Caribou and Carl Craig ft Francesco Tristano all stood out for me. I guess these were entirely unique events which is why I enjoyed them so much, hearing something different each time. That should have been the case for the closing considering the almighty Aphex Twin returned after playing the closing last year. There were certainly some good tracks played by the man, and don't get me wrong I went wild on more than one occasion, but overall perhaps it wasn't my thing. I think I much preferred to listen to them at home rather than live. Ignoring personal preference however, I was impressed at the general level of production involved in the performance. The sounds that were created blew me away (quite literally thanks to the new Funktion One sound system and it's ear drum tickling bass bins), and the stage looked great with an entirely unique setup with big screens to support the sounds. Top marks for that.
Before Aphex though we all had the pleasure of James Zabiela. This guy was one of, if not my favourite DJ a few years back and I had cooled off on him of late. But his We Love sets this summer, and in particular his closing set was fantastic. The man is a show man, he just loves it, and certainly isn't afraid to show everyone how much of a good time he's having. The man just rocks out as if he's playing an epic guitar solo for some metal band, thrashing about the place, only his instrument of choice happens to be a set of decks and his cool little effects iPad. It adds an element of realism and an extra dimension to the performance when he turns his back to the crowd so you can see him messing about with the tracks on that iPad. Track wise, as always, the choice was sublime, with an absolute monster from Daft Punk's Tron soundtrack; Derezzed, being played towards the end of his set.
La Terraza had an impressive list of crowd favourites lining up to take their turn on the decks, with me wandering in to see the end of Fatboy Slim's set as he spliced together a series of classic vocals and tracks including ‘NYC Beat' by Armin Van Helden, the acappella from Adele's track ‘Lonely In The Deep' and the theme tune from Star Wars. Anyone that does anything sci-fi star related is good in my books, and if I could have physically got any closer than 20m away to him, I'd have given him the highest of high fives.
Effectively though, that was the only ‘issue' with the night. Sheer popularity had led to the closing party being packed out, leading to a serious amount of pushing and shoving to get a decent spot in the room. Which is great for We Love, of course, but a pain in the arse for people who enjoy a little space to bounce around.
After Norman Cook (as he so often prefers to be called these days) another firm favourite took to the La Terraza decks. 2manydj's opened up with the classic ‘Hey Boy, Hey Girl' track by The Chemicals Brothers following up with more Daft Punk tunes such as ‘Robot Rock'… leading to near as makes no difference a mosh pit. After absorbing a little of their set and enjoying the sweet smell of the fat mans sweaty back rubbing against me right in front of my face I made it out the Sunset Terrace.
This room by now would be very chilled, plenty of places to sit and relax, but even at 3/4am it was busy with people enjoying the eclectic mix of music being played by DJ Cheeba, Mr Doris and Fredrico Mancini on rotation. It was bizarre to be stood a few metres from the door into the Discoteca where all manner of violent drum ‘n' bass noises were destroying peoples hearing only for it to absolutely go off in the Sunset Terrace to ‘Jolene' by Dolly Parton. Only at We Love.
As the night begun to draw to a close for myself (but not for a few hours for the actual party), there was time to take in a nice slice of New Order's ‘Blue Monday' from 2manydj's and check out We Love resident Joris Voorn closing out La Terraza… it is the eclecticism in terms of DJ and music policy that makes We Love so popular. Just taing a look back at the series of events they have thrown, and of course the closings, you can genuinely see there is something for everyone, with the night quite effectively summed up by a logo being projected on to various walls; “Unity. Community. And Serious Fun”. That sounds about right to me.
