- It seems almost counter-intuitive, but weekends in Ibiza, talent-wise at least, are kind of slow. If you're a big name DJ, you want to be in mainland Europe—a place where getting in two gigs is far easier logistically. Few want to hold a night where they have to play every single Friday or Saturday for months on end. This makes a label night like Defected at Pacha uniquely primed for success on Ibiza: With such a distinct sound, you can know (almost) exactly what you're getting into every Saturday.
Dennis Ferrer, Sandy Rivera and The Shapeshifters offer wildly different takes on house music. But you still know that if you end up at Pacha on a Saturday night that you're going to get it in some form or another. This was the case this week especially, as special guest Quentin Harris dropped out due to a family emergency at the very last minute. Yet, if you took a look out at the crowd at 3:30 AM, you wouldn't have noticed much of a change in the attendance figures from the week previous. The place was busy. You could walk around the edges of the floor quickly and easily. But good luck getting through the middle.
Label boss Simon Dunmore, used to setting the table for the imprint's heavy hitters, was clearly relishing the rare opportunity to play a headlining set. By his set's finish, he was pumping out hit after hit from the label's catalogue and elsewhere. He followed on from the only slight less banging opening set provided by John Jacobsen, a baseball cap-wearing jock who—if he hadn't been playing mp3s from his hard drive that night—probably would have been looked at funny for being underdressed. Jacobsen knew who was opening for, however, and set the tone perfectly for Dunmore.
Dunmore's performance was particularly interesting in the way that he withheld pleasure. At a club like Pacha, you'd expect that he'd be banging out things from the off. After an initial salvo, though, he took his foot off the gas pedal for a bit and simply let things groove. It's likely his many years of experience that gave him confidence enough to do so. But it was a refreshing change of pace from the "I only have two hours here, I better make this count" mentality that drives so many sets these days. And when he started to make his way to bigger and more obvious things, it only made it sweeter.