I stared at my ringing alarm in mortification while I figured out who I was, where I was and what terrible reason I could possibly be getting up at 6:30am for in Ibiza. In seconds my mind focused and I remembered that after the Matinee Closing festivities Amnesia was serving Danny Tenaglia for breakfast and with puffy-eyed glee I rolled myself out of bed and all the way to Amnesia in time for his 7.30am start.
Daytime Amnesia is one of my favourite places in Ibiza – a perfect opportunity to feel part of the amazing community created for a few hours between crowd and DJ, and yet also be able to stand back and observe the ridiculousness around you. The crowd on the floor and along the balcony was top notch on this day, with the usual slightly more dubious suspects on the podiums flanking the main dancefloor – all part of the charm though. Tenaglia opened with some classic house female vocals and his trademark drums, briefly looping the vocal sample from I Will Survive; truly a man of the old school. What followed was a playful and percussive performance which absolutely flew by, as all too soon he was on the microphone thanking us and announcing the end of his set; “short and sweet, like me!” Although I was chuffed to see Danny out here, since his dates have been far less frequent this year, his involvement was unfortunately a bit of a disappointment. Enjoyable though his set was, it was only a warm up. A mere hour and a half simply isn't enough time for a legend like that, and I can't imagine why he wasn't slotted in later, if not last.
No time to cry about it though, our daytime disco was in safe hands with Mar T, who stoked the fires even further after Tenaglia's warm up with tracks like String Thing, by Shadowchild. The daylight which had been slowly creeping up on us was now a firm fact, revealing the silliness which was starting to spread throughout the room. Spongebob Square Pants suddenly appeared, dangling from the low ceiling of the booth behind Mar T's shoulder; some feller had a horse mask on his head and was giving a piggy back to another feller with a sparkly cowboy hat on; a wide eyed girl walked past trilling; I was having vodka redbulls for breakfast… standard Sunday morning sort of stuff anyway.
Maetrik kept the bass coming from 11am, cementing my love affair with that dirty deep clef. He was followed by the UK's Steve Lawler, who was obviously feeling very festive, peppering his underground techno with some catchy classics like a remix of Snap! I've Got the Power and Kadoc's The Night Train. Mr Amnesia Terrace himself, Marco Carola, started heavier and deeper than I had hitherto thought possible, setting a tone that would have been difficult to maintain. Sure enough, Carola chilled things out for a bit after an hour – chilled being an extremely relative term, mind. Around 4pm he began to get really creative, cleverly adding in a variety of sounds to the booming bass including eerie and ethereal harmonics which seamlessly blended into Carl Craig's remix of Junior Boys Like a Child. The final hour of his set would slot safely in my top 5 of the entire season, as Carola took us on every manner of aural twists and turns, with captivatingly quiet and tense breakdowns absolutely shattered by savage drops. One of the final tracks was INXS – Need You Tonight, but bigger and louder than you've ever heard it before. After so many underground techno tracks the impact was huge; the room erupted and even the vast Amnesia speakers seemed to almost buckle under the pressure.
It was 6pm before the final cheers rang out - the latest Amnesia closing in the last ten years, at least, and thanks to a quality bunch of DJs and a sterling crowd, was one of those experiences that remind me why I'm in Ibiza.
In the words of a new friend I made that day, “That was f***ing superb.”
