The first two episodes of my documentary Inside Ibiza focused mainly on Roger Sanchez’ DJing activities and the clubbing life that he leads in Ibiza, so for this third episode I decided to take things in a completely different direction.

This episode begins with a scene of Roger’s Events Manager, Maarten van’t Veld (who often is accused of having the easiest job in the world), floating into shot on an inflatable in a pool with a beer, whilst he mutters something about having a “hard life”. This scene sets the tone for the episode perfectly.

I decided to add scripted humour to Inside Ibiza because DJs and clubbing industry folk in general tend to take themselves too seriously. A lot of the time, DJ interviews are pretty dry, and quite often they fail to capture the interest of anyone outside of the electronic music scene. Writing in humour, and setting up some scenes/interviews to be deliberately funny was my attempt to address these problems. I also hoped that it would allow us to show some of the unique and fun characters that surround Roger Sanchez in Ibiza.

When it came to presenting the humour it would have made little sense to fill the entire episode with jokes (after all this is meant to be a fairly serious music documentary series), but by juxtaposing it in between scenes of Roger working in his music studio, it actually elevated the humour to another level.

While Roger works hard on his beats, and enthusiastically explains his set up and technique to the camera, we keep returning to interview snippets and scenes of Roger’s staff fooling around like two naughty schoolboys.

What’s brilliant about this contrast (at least for me as a director), is that it is probably the closest that the documentary series came to capturing the emotional truth of all three characters. Roger is the ever-diligent music producer who is obsessed with sound and rhythm. He is motivated by DJing experiences. Maarten is a beer-swilling Dutchman with a biting, sarcastic sense of humour and an unconventional work ethic. Jermaine is a former NYC nightclub doorman turned DJ touring roadie, a man who has never taken life too seriously. All three are endearing personalities, and I hope that by the end of the episode you feel like you really know them.

The track that Roger builds throughout the episode in his studio is ‘Animalz’, a new club single produced under his S-Man moniker.

This video was originally posted on YouTube: bit.ly/wEuT6m

I think it’s amazing that DJ technology has moved to this stage. Just a few years ago, DJs were fascinated by the portability and possibilities of CDJs, and now we’re able to DJ wirelessly using a touchscreen device or mobile phone. How far we have come. Where will we go next?

This video was filmed in Helsinki, at the small and intimate Bassment club in December 2011.

I’ve been a huge fan of Luciano for many years (I wrote an extensive feature on him for Beatportal when I was editor of that site), so it was a great honour to be able to get inside the DJ booth and film him doing his magic at his Vagabundos Pacha Ibiza residency.

There is a bit of a cult that surrounds Luciano and his Cadenza parties. He is undoubtedly one of the most exciting DJs in the world to dance to, and there’s a real presence about him when he mixes his music. His Latino-infused, carnival house and techno sounds always lead to a riotous party on the dancefloor and in the DJ booth – if you know Luciano, you’ll know that his DJ booth is always crammed full of fun-to-watch chaos.

For this short, I wanted to embody all of that free party spirit, and transport the viewer inside his crazy party world for a few moments. I decided that the engine of the story had to come from the sensational Vagabundos promo crew who parade around the island’s beaches and Ibiza Town each day.

The idea was to have the camera be taken in by the Vagabundos gypsies on the streets of Ibiza, and then be transported into Pacha and the DJ booth of Luciano for a few minutes of crazy DJing and partying, before it all ends like a weird dream.

Filming the Vagabundos crew in the middle of one of their promo tours was no easy task, not least because they insisted on doing a shot at EVERY bar in Ibiza Town. They sing, they dance, they laugh (maniacally), they juggle, they do magic, they entertain – that’s a hard thing to capture on camera at low light on the move!

The most important thing for me was to come home with live audio, as the Vagabundos are known for chanting wonderful drunken songs during their tours. Their songs, to my ears, are a cross between a child’s nursery rhyme and a football hooligan chant, and the effect they have on the public is always fantastic to watch.

Back in the edit, I had to tweak the captured audio in Ableton, and re-pitch it so that it mixed perfectly with the first recorded audio on the film – the amazing, Luciano approved (he always plays it!) ‘In Church’ by M83. The singing that you hear at the beginning of the film actually came from two Vagabundos songs recorded that night, but luckily with a bit of audio trickery I was able to make it sound like the same song.

As the Vagabundos crew carry us into Pacha, the soundtrack builds up to an almighty drop from Luciano, Mendo’s ‘Old School’. We see Luciano DJing on Traktor and two X1 controllers. I thought his set up looked a bit like the cockpit of the Starship Enterprise, particularly from the wide angle that we used at the end of the film.

Filming in the DJ booth at Pacha with Luciano in the mix was, as predicted, a complete disaster! There were about 20 people inside the booth, despite it being designed to hold four, and as it was 5.30AM they were all a little worse for wear and kept elbowing the camera oblivious to us trying to film. It was fun.

The second and final song I used in the film was actually live audio from the club. Luciano played his beautiful choir-based song (as yet, an unknown tune) towards the end of the set, and the moment he created in the club was so beautiful, I had to use it even if the audio was a bit rough. Watching it back, still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up!

It finally ends by fading into the accordion player from the Vagabundos, in a hazy dream like way (I hope!).

With the first episode of Inside Ibiza having been quite frenetic, I began Episode 2 of Roger Sanchez’ Inside Ibiza documentary at a more relaxed pace.

Beginning with some daylight scenes at Roger’s Ibiza villa, we get a chance to see where and how the DJ lives on the island, and also learn more about the man himself.

We were slightly restricted in what we could film at Roger’s villa as a lot of burglary happens in Ibiza, and Roger didn’t want to take the risk of having his home’s location identified on film. Believe it or not, criminal gangs regularly target Ibiza villas belonging to DJs as there is usually little security, they are not always occupied, and there is generally quite a lot of expensive studio kit to steal. So we couldn’t show the view or the facade of the house, but we did get a tour inside, and got to hang out by the pool.

Topics of conversation in this episode include art (Roger studied art and architecture in college), design, Roger’s record label Stealth, and his family. How Roger’s family deals with his constant touring was particularly interesting. A lot of the time people think of DJing as glamourous jet-setting but there is a flip side – you don’t get to spend enough quality time with your family/loved ones.

The episode then moves into a beach party scene hosted by Roger’s Stealth Records at La Plage, which is one of Ibiza’s best beach bars. Label DJs Jesse Voorn and Muzzaik all make appearances. There were some fantastically dressed dancers at the event, so I “borrowed” a couple of them to film an impromptu music video on the beach (this is usually the part where people make a sarcastic comment about me having the crappiest job in the world). Considering it was done on the fly, I thought it worked out really well.

The episode ends with quite a heart warming tale, in the form of Tara, one of Roger’s biggest fans. Quite unusually, despite Tara having been a fan of Roger Sanchez for over a decade she had never actually met him, so we introduced her to him for the first time. The only track that I ever considered for this scene was ‘Another Chance’, Roger’s most emotive record, and his most famous.

Such consistency has made Material Series one of the scene’s most reliable and successful techno imprints around. Its contributing artists always come from respectable stock – the label has released music from Slam, Samuel L Session, Butch, Format:B, SIS, and NoiDoi. As such, its tracks are continually charted and played by big and small DJs alike.

This month Material celebrates five years with a typically explosive and unpredictable triple vinyl album from label co-owner Mihalis Safras. With eight versatile and absorbing tracks from the big Greek, including one cute electronica tune, as well as a third vinyl containing only 35 DJ-friendly loops (one loop to commemorate each of the 35 Material releases so far), ’5 Years of Material Series’ is one big and fun release for the imprint.

We chatted with Mihalis Safras to find out more about Material and its special birthday album.

Why did you and Mark Broom originally want to launch a label?

The story of how Material came to exist is quite simple. I had known Mark for many years, and we decided to start our own label to release tracks that we liked. At first it was just for our releases, but then we started to invite friends and other known producers to contribute, and the label grew from there.

How would you describe the sound of Material?

When we started the label we wanted it to be only for real techno, not 140bpm techno, but for more groovy sounds like the music that DJs like Adam Beyer play. Then after a while, we started putting out music that wasn’t just straight up techno. I think it’s good for a label to be versatile. If you look at some of the most successful labels in techno, like Cocoon, they don’t have a particular style, they just release music that they like. Similarly, we do not really have a style on Material – it can be tech house, house, or proper techno.

Material does have some rules about the artists it features though – we only put out music from known producers, and never from newcomers.

What is Material’s biggest ever release?

That’s too hard to say. We’ve had many big releases over the years from producers like Riva Starr, Lee Van Dowski, Format B, and Oxia.

Material releases both on digital and vinyl. Why is that?

From the start we wanted Material to be a vinyl label as Mark and I only play vinyl. Actually, Mark has begun to play CDs in his sets recently, although I’m still 100% vinyl. Anyway vinyl has always been important to Material. We do every release on vinyl and digital, and often the physical and digital releases will be slightly different. One or the other may include an exclusive track or an exclusive remix, depending on the release.

It’s surprising that Material still does vinyl, considering the slump in vinyl sales in recent years.

Perhaps the hardest challenge that we have faced as a label, is trying to continue with vinyl releases. There was pressure on the label to stop doing vinyl because 12-inch sales were really, really low. We discussed it intensely for about two months, but in the end we came up with a solution. I’m happy we’re still able to do it.

Many people will probably find it hard to believe that you only play vinyl still.

It’s true that there are not that many vinyl DJs around these days. A few weeks ago I played a set at Space in Ibiza and the sound engineer was shocked when he saw my record bags. He said a DJ hadn’t played vinyl at Space in two years! But there are still plenty of key vinyl players around, like Ricardo Villalobos and Ben Sims. A lot of the Romanians like Rhadoo, Raresh and Pedro only play vinyl too.

What would you say has been the label’s biggest achievement?

Apart from our big sellers, a large amount of Material tracks get licensed for big CD compilations. One of our tracks was licensed for the official Love Parade compilation recently, and Space Ibiza always includes tracks from Material on its CDs. I think this year’s Space CD was the third year in a row that they featured our music.

That’s a great sign of the popularity of the label. I think Material is now a really well known imprint in the techno scene. Every release gets into the charts of big DJs, and a lot of our releases are supported by banner advertising on Beatport which is not easy to achieve as the store has a very strict editorial policy about which music it pushes. All this hopefully means that Material is very popular amongst techno DJs.

Can you guide us through your ’5 Years of Material’ album?

Mark and I wanted to do something a bit special for the label’s fifth anniversary, so we both decided to do albums for it. We have decided to release my album first as Mark has an album coming out soon with James Ruskin on Blueprint. Mark’s album will probably come out in March.

For my album, I wanted to both reference the style, sound and vision of Material, as well as provide something a bit different for DJs that somehow commemorates us reaching five years.

As well as eight exclusive and unreleased tracks from me, I came up with the idea to do one vinyl of 35 DJ-friendly loops – one loop for each of the 35 Material releases so far. These loops are mini tracks that should hopefully provide DJs will hours and hours of mixing fun.

What can you tell us about the eight tracks?

Well the one that might shock people the most is Percent, which is an electronica track that I made a few years ago. Material Series is known for many things, but not for chill out or electronica! But because this album was for our birthday, I wanted to include something special like this.

Probably the biggest track on the album is D12, which is Mark’s favourite. A lot of my close DJ friends have said the same thing. There’s a disco vibe and rolling atmosphere on D12 that apparently works really well on the dancefloor, although I wouldn’t know, because I haven’t had the chance to test out any of the album’s tracks yet. I only play vinyl, remember?!

That’s crazy! So even when you have a work-in-progress to test out on a dancefloor, you won’t just play a CD?

I could but that would go against every bone in my DJ body. Vinyl is everything to me.

What about some of the other tracks on the album?

There’s a track called Luci, which is quite musical and melodic. Jerome Sydenham, Mauro Picotto, and Oxia all asked to remix the track, so when the album’s remixes come out that will be the most-remixed track from ’5 Years of Material’.

There is a big piano tune called Briscok which is probably my favourite cut on the album. I’ve listened to it many, many times, and it never gets tiring. I think it may become a bit of a classic, as it sounds quite timeless.

There’s a couple of deep, tech house cuts on the album called Deepia and Coco. Both of them are quite current and a bit more housey. On one of them I sampled a very big and famous rock band but I can’t say which!

And finally, Adam Beyer’s favourite track from the album is called A Paratamas. The title is quite funny – it comes from a Greek word, which means ‘Get out of here!’, like if you had dumped a girl and she begged you to take her back, you would say ‘A Paratamas!’. It has a deep and rolling bassline.

Get Mihalis Safras ’5 Years of Material Series’ from Juno

Built around a soulful male (or is that female?) vocal, the track could almost be classic New York house if it wasn’t for the deep synthesizer bleeps and nominal techno rhythms that prod the track along cautiously. The cut is probably Beyer’s most spiritual record since 2009′s Joel Mull collaboration ‘Forming Dies’. It is also his slowest offering in quite a while, clocking in at a housey 125 BPM.

Two of the track’s remixers, Joel Mull and Radio Slave, use the opportunity to wrought their own form of dancefloor beauty. Working in a layer of quietly soulful keys, Mull’s version is bittersweet afterparty techno, and perfect for those sublime moments of breath in between a heads-down sweat session.

Radio Slave, who quite often plays with vocal-driven reductionist techno (remember 2006′s Deer In The Headlights?), works in his usual brand of heavy kick drums and loopy percussion, to balance the track in between a hynoptic dream-like state and a smoky warehouse rave.

That only leaves Sweden’s great sound explorer Jesper Dahlbäck to take ‘No Rain’ in a completely new direction, by deconstructing the track’s main heart and sucking out the vocal’s soul, to replace it with his own form of machine funk. With an emphasis on raw beats and percussion loops, Dahlbäck’s version is typically analogue and gritty.

Yep, an Adam Beyer vocal record doesn’t come along too often, but it is always worth the wait.

Download Adam Beyer ‘No Rain’ [Truesoul] from Beatport.

Here are Terry Church’s Director’s Notes for the first episode:

When I visited Ibiza for the first time 10 years ago, one record ruled the island’s many dancefloors and beach parties. Never tired of dancing to its beat, people knew every line in it, they even sang the words in the street.

That song was Roger Sanchez’ ‘Another Chance’, so to be invited to document the Roger’s DJ life in Ibiza a decade on this summer was particularly exciting, and an honour considering Roger’s huge profile on the island.

It was also a bit of a challenge because we had to get all of our filming done at the height of Ibiza’s clubbing season in August, when dance music madness is all around.

To say Roger is a busy man would be an understatement. He is always on the move, in between countries, working in the studio, DJing in a packed club, or cruising at 35,000 feet. So whatever we did with our five part documentary, I knew that we had to capture some of that rolling chaos and the jet-setting DJ lifestyle that he experiences on a daily basis.

With Episode 1, I decided to propel the viewer straight into Roger’s DJ life, as we accompany him during a typical Ibiza day/night. The action moves fast, as everything that occurs in Episode 1 happened in a 24-hour period.

There is the journey to Ibiza on a private jet, the rushing from one gig to another, the moment when Roger walks into the DJ booth of the world famous Space terrace and sees his audience for the first time, the feeling on the dancefloor when he plays, and the adorning fans who seek his autograph and a photo.

There is barely time to breathe. Everything builds up deliberately towards his main DJ set at Space, and I hope that when the beat finally drops, you feel for a moment what it might actually be like to be Roger Sanchez.

The club wanted something on film that captured some of the craziness, carnival atmosphere, and unique revelry of their last party of the clubbing season, as well as something that reflected the wide variety of music and DJs that the famous event offers. They also wanted the film to be over 15 minutes, which is quite long for today’s online audience so it was a unique challenge.

The idea I came up with was to do a mini mix between the different arenas and DJs of the closing party that not only visually took viewers on a journey through the club, but also musically. One of the great things about Space’s closing party is being able to hear so many different DJs and sounds together on one night, so I wanted to reflect this in my film.

I also wanted to sum up the general mood of the attendees – the fact that it is the last party of the summer, and the last big blow out before everyone has to head home to their normal lives, wherever in the world they come from. For many, the only thing that remains of that party is the memory of that magical night on the island.

So with this in mind, the film begins with a hazy snapshot of a moment on a Ibiza beach. We see a hand that scribbles ‘I love’ into the sand…

This segues nicely into the video’s first track ‘So Much Love’, which Fedde Le Grand played. He DJed outside in the car park arena just as the sun was setting which gave some of the shots a nice orange glow.

Never focusing on one DJ for too long, Fedde’s track soon mixes into Wally Lopez which takes the viewer into the long night ahead. His section ends with the first of three time stamps, which are designed to communicate to the viewer the insane length of Space’s closing party (it began at 4:30 PM on Sunday afternoon and ended at 11:00 AM on Monday morning).

The third performer we see is Uner, who played on the sunset terrace after dark. Because of the change in location, I wanted more of a trippy nightclub feel in this arena by using darker, light-driven snapshots of action.

From there, we head into the heaving Space terrace, where the relatively unimposing frame of Maya Jane Coles keeps the audience locked in a tight fever with her deep twisted house music. We used as much red as we could in her section, to visually match the heat and intensity of those moments, as well as her unique hair colour.

One of the difficulties of mixing the six different DJs together into one fluid journey, was the huge difference in BPM range. The hardest transition was Maya Jane Coles to Armin van Buuren, as Maya’s music is generally slow and hypnotic, whilst Armin’s music is banging and euphoric.

The solution I came up with, was to create a breather in between those two DJs, just like a clubber might take a break between dancefloor workouts. The film takes the viewer on a tour of Space’s chill out zone which, although relaxed and calm by comparison to the other scenes, never loses its rhythm.

As the tension quickly increases, the film jolts (I hope) quite unexpectedly into the slamming rhythms of Armin in the main Discoteca of Space.

The final time stamp brings us into the final set of the night – Carl Cox on the sunny Terrace. His set, as always, was full of classic dance tunes and the one of the highlights was Jam & Spoon’s remix of 1990′s Age of Love ‘Age of Love’. The track’s famous vocal, ‘Come on dance with me’ turned out to be the perfect conclusion to what was hopefully a heady and unstoppable journey through the closing party of Space 2011.

The film ends with that hazy hand on the beach – deliberately shot and graded in a super 8 quality to give it a nostalgic, dream-like feel – where we see the rest of its message, before the sea washes away the memory of a party and a summer that once was.

Tracklist

Here are the tracks included in the film, in order of appearance.

Fedde Le Grand ‘So Much Love’
Black Vs. Mihalis Safras ‘Wonderful Life’
X-Press 2 ‘Kill 100′ (UNER Remix)
Maya Jane Coles ‘Parallel Worlds’
Alex Kunnari ‘Lost’ (Tom Fall Remix)
Age of Love ‘Age of Love’ (Jam & Spoon Watch Out For Stella Remix)

Much of the musique concrète movement of those decades utilised the malleability of magnetic tape to manipulate the speed of recordings, and splice together different sounds.

Multitrack recording, invented by the American Ross Snyder in 1955, made the process of remixing much easier – producers could take whatever instrument, vocal, or drum line they needed, and easily turn recorded songs into something else.

Then the sampler came along which allowed producers to borrow small parts, riffs, drum loops, or even a single kick drum, from recordings to create something new.

With the rise of powerful computers, then came time-stretching and the mighty mash-up. A new remix culture was born, driven by advanced software that allowed any music fan to rework professional tracks.

Over the decades, the technology needed to create a remix has gotten smaller and smaller. In the time of Pierre Schaeffer (credited as the founder of the musique concrète movement), you needed a huge room filled with all manner of strange machines to manipulate sound. It was very expensive too.

As technology has advanced over the decades since, the barriers to entering the remixer’s world has fallen as music studios have shrunk to the size of a laptop.

The hurdles are about to get even smaller. This week, International DJ Dubfire launched a pioneering remix contest that will see the release of the world’s first ever official remix created solely on an Apple iOS device (that is, an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch).

Just as modern software sequencers lowered the barrier to music production by allowing anyone with a laptop the chance to produce their own tunes, Dubfire’s groundbreaking competition potentially opens up a new democratic frontier for music production as no professional equipment, computers, music software, or prior studio knowledge is required to produce a remix. 

All you need to take part in the remix contest is an Apple iOS device and the Remiix Dubfire app ($2.99/£1.79/2.39€ from Apple’s App Store). The winner of the competition will see their remix released on Dubfire’s respected record label, SCI+TEC Digital Audio.

For the music industry, this is a major and extraordinary development. The fact that we now live in a time where labels can release an official remix that was created solely on a music fan’s mobile phone will no doubt send judders up some.

But whilst it seems strangely unfamiliar and weirdly futuristic, it’s good to remember that these sorts of disruptive inventions have been happening in electronic music since the middle of the last century.