- The first thing I did when I walked into Space was spend 30 seconds trying to work out if the man with a beard I was looking at was Gerd Janson. It was after 2 AM and the Terrace was as packed as I'd ever seen it, plus the lighting was minimal and moody. Suspended upside down over the crowd was a muscular dummy, which, when the light hit it at certain angles, appeared to raise its head. I figured that Janson must've cancelled, so I made my way out past the DJ booth and round the back to the raised bar that looks over the dance floor. There, below me to my left, was Janson, DJing clubby disco cuts from a makeshift booth that sat directly opposite the main one.
It's not often you feel disorientated at a party in Ibiza, so it's a welcome surprise when it happens. The team behind Afterlife, a new Thursday night venture from Tale Of Us, had gone to considerable effort to make Space their own. The party's second room, Chamber, was accessed through the doors to the club's world-famous Discoteca, but when you got inside, the main dance floor had been sectioned off with a black curtain and a small stage had been set up by the central bar. I caught Boddika in here, playing heavy techno by the likes of Marcel Dettmann and Terence Fixmer. The Funktion-Ones were a little bassy, but the vibe was lively. Most importantly, it offered the crowd an intimate and musically distinct alternative to the hectic Terrace, which is what all good second rooms should do.
After dropping trancey cuts like his king-sized remix of Digitalism's "Destination Breakdown," Janson signed off in a melodic flourish with DJ Koze's remix of Roman Flügel's "9 Years." DJ Tennis followed with the occasional sad bomb, though because he was sandwiched between Janson and Tale Of Us—who were the best I've seen them in years—his set fades in the memory. Tale Of Us played chunkier and with more swing than I remember them doing in the past, interspersing their gloomy synth lines with upbeat bits like Layton Giordani's "Unspoken," Bicep's new remix of Blaze's "Lovelee Dae" and an edit of Trentemøller's "Moan." (That said, Âme's remix of Dan Croll's syrupy hit "From Nowhere" felt like an unnecessary step back in time.)
Tale Of Us launched Afterlife in June in Barcelona, and already it feels like a presence on the global club scene, which says a lot about the duo's runaway popularity. The collaboration with Space is an interesting one: on the one hand, Afterlife gets to play a leading role in the club's farewell season, but it also leaves a question mark over the party's future. Moving elsewhere next season will mean reshaping and rethinking the concept. For now, though, it'll continue to do a convincing job of filling the gap left by Richie Hawtin's ENTER. Where Hawtin's concepts often felt overblown, Afterlife presents a smart, coherent vision that matches tight programming with a striking visual identity—so striking, in fact, it might take you a minute to work out what the hell's going on.
Photo credit /
Alex Caballero