Departure made its grand comeback last night in San Antonio's waterfront bar, Itaca. After a hugely successful debut year in 2011 the party, which was originally aimed at workers, has returned to Ibiza as more of an all round brand and event that is appealing to both the season workers and the tourists. The opening line-up featured Departure resident Oliver Drops, Bakwards Disko, Keiran Sharples, Claudia Lovisa, Ryan O'Gorman and Tom Harris.
Normally, Departure takes over the roof terrace of Itaca from late evening gradually moving the party downstairs in the early hours to host the main room. This summer the roof terrace will be open from the 1st June, however the downstairs area was perfectly suited to the opening, with a large dance-floor making plenty of space for people to generate some body heat. As the first real opening party of this coming week, Departure had an exciting but hard job on their hands in kicking off the season in San Antonio.
The Bakwards Disko boys made up of the lovely Sam Archer, Jamie Osborne and Josh Dunleavy got the party started with a stella set smashing out Chris Carrier's bouncy track Planet Patrol and finishing their blinding set with Fabio Gianneli's remix of Mirco Violi's track 'Do it one more time' which made the dance-floor mentally erupt. As the first act to really warm up the crowd the lads did a great job in getting the party started and by midnight the bar area was heaving with the typical underground shuffle being pulled out the bag.
Departure resident Oliver Drops took over and entertained the party-goers, who by this point were cutting some unbelievable shapes, and made the walls sweat with a tight on point playlist of gritty underground beats. The evening even had a selection of guest headliners, which saw Vitalik Label boss and We Love guest DJ Ryan O'Gorman give the crowd an electrifyingly deep set staying true to his impulsive and unique style. Super Nature's Claudia Lovisa also gave an amazing set and quite frankly absolutely smashed it especially when she dropped Kruse & Nürnberg's track 'Daze without you.' As a personal newbie to Claudia's talents I had little to no preconceptions of her as an artist but happy to admit I was pleasantly surprised by her obvious talent and infectious style. She literally made the dance-floor hot with the rawest of underground passion and sounds, pulling in tracks featuring catchy vocals and big basslines, dealing out the perfect set for the Departure party and clubbers.
Come 4am there was even an encore for the hot little act to get back behind the decks but by this point the line between being awake and sleep walking was becoming pretty blurred for me from an epic but very long day at IMS. So, I called it a night as Keiran Sharples closed the show and I walked away from the first Departure party of the season very impressed and finally satisfied with my first dose of the deeper stuff... let the season commence!
