La Torre - Volumen Uno

1. Francis Bebey - Forest Nativity
2. Domenique Dumont - Comme Ça
3. Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Air A Danser
4. Ahmed Fakroun - Nis Yan
5. Spooky - Orange Coloured Liquid
6. Cantoma - Tabarin
7. Finis Africae - Managua
8. András - Gold Coast (Surfer's Paradise Mix)
9. Barry Forgie - Dawn Mists
10. Il Guardiano Dep Faro - Disco Divina
11. Tri Atma Und Gyan - Nishabda Natürliche Liebe
12. Planet Funk - Inside All the People (Harvey's Ibiza Sleepy Mix)
13. Mark Barrott - Deep Water
14. Gryningen - Frü Andra Hand Till Strñnderna I Nice
15. Hatchback - White Diamond

Compiled by Pete Gooding & Mark Barrott

No matter the season or the nationality, every day on Ibiza, tribute is paid to Carthaginian deity Tanit at sunset. The warrior goddess of dance, fertility, creation and destruction lords over the Balearic island, as she has for centuries. Phoenicians, Assyrians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Arabs, and even the Norwegians have conquered the island since ancient times and every summer that history plays out, a similar array of nationalities descending on the island anew. Yet the soul of Ibiza remains intact. Take Catedral de la Verge de les Neus, the main church on the island: erected atop a mosque, which in turn was built on the rubble of a Roman temple to Mercury, but before all of them, there was the temple that worshipped Tanit. And every sunset still ushers in her arrival. Sunset is a singular time on the island, a sacred occasion taking on the feel of a pagan ritual. It marks a change not just in the pivot from sun to moon, but a shift in consciousness, the end of the beginning.

For those who make the pilgrimage to the island looking for that transformative experience, it requires little more than venturing away from the flashing lights of San Antonio towards such sublimity. Like an oasis in the Vegas-like desert that threatens the island each summer, La Torre beckons with its beauty and ‘vista spectacular’. Tucked away on the west coast of the island outside of San Antonio, La Torre embodies the essence of that authentic Balearic spirit. Balearic, as pioneered by Alfredo Fiorito at Amnesia and José Padilla at Café del Mar in the early 80s, is the true sound of Ibiza.Yet is there a form of music more difficult to describe? Balearic can mean ECM jazz and DJ Koze, Grace Jones and Andreas Vollenweider, Larry Heard and Fleetwood Mac, Indian classical music and “Smokebelch II”. Balearic is experimental and radio pop, it’s cosmopolitan and countercultural, international yet wholly specific to a singular place on Earth.

This album is not an exercise in nostalgia, but rather a trip that rekindles and reframes Balearic music in the present moment. It lights upon and encapsulates all the evocative beauty of Ibiza, the sounds themselves matching the colour palette of the island. The red dirt hills and the white sands, the pink blooms of almond trees and the electric blue of the water surrounding Es Vedrà, the magnetic magic, vivid colours and raw beauty of Ibiza is all here. At its root, Balearic music is always experiential. So even if you can’t get to the terrace at La Torre for the ‘vista spectacular’, feel free to open up the gatefold, pour a chilled glass of Belondrade and journey back within.

— Andy Beta, 2016.