- All of Ibiza's clubs have their idiosyncrasies, but by and large you enter into a cavernous space filled with thousands of people and blaring dance music. At Underground, the homely spot perched on a ridge just up from Amnesia, the initial experience couldn't be more different. The converted villa gets going famously late, so it's not unusual to walk in at 2 or 3 AM to near silence, punctuated only by the clinking of glasses and the trickle of the water features. When I arrived for the opening of tINI And The Gang, though, the spacious outdoor terrace was already gently busy, the balmy air humming with faraway chatter. It had just gone 1 AM.
An hour later, most people had moved indoors to the venue's only dance floor, an intimate, rectangular space that fans out across a small raised platform and to the back of the room, by an L-shaped bar. The punters—in this case mostly young, outgoing Brits (the tiger print arms and chests, part of a pre-game ritual for The Zoo Project, were a dead giveaway)—dance at eye-level with the DJ. Musically and in terms of its sweaty atmosphere, Underground is Ibiza's answer to Club Der Visionaere.
Rex Club resident Molly was in the booth, gliding from left to right while dishing out deep, chunky, uplifting grooves that never sat still rhythmically. On top, too, she kept things constantly moving, with rushy acid lines giving way to yearning vocals and spacey melodies (Planetary Assault System's "Attractor"). It was one of the most accomplished warm-ups I'd heard in a while, the kind of set that forces the headliner to come out swinging.
Both arms aloft, Molly finished with Stephen Brown's "Pablo," a driving techno cut with soaring synths. tINI, who had been dancing hard from about five feet away, was careful not to interrupt her flow, slipping straight into her opening track. Rocking back and forth, she lent on tech house and techno rollers with throaty basslines for the first hour, before working in some funkier selections, like Groove Selecta's excellent "Ravejavik." The place was heaving right up until 6 AM, when, after a couple of playful false endings, she wound things down to vociferous applause. In 2015, tINI told me that Underground was the only club on the island where she felt "her project understood, where the prices are affordable and the musical direction fits." Two years later, that remains truer than ever.
Photo credit /
Julián Farina