Balearic: Is it a sound? A style? A genre? Jim Butler goes searching for answers and forgets to ask for Chris Rea…

In March 2020, Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy, like the majority of people around the world who weren’t frontline workers, began working from home. For music fans of a certain persuasion, however, she was about to perform a key task. Broadcasting from her home studio, she not only kept the musical conversation going – “Something I felt was important for people isolating,” she reflects two years later, “including myself” – she was placing the latest marker in one of dance music’s most enduring, and contentious, narratives. The story we call Balearic.

That summer, she temporarily filled in for Gilles Peterson on one of his Worldwide FM morning shows. Having already begun asking for audience requests on her other shows on the station, she replicated this vital dialogue and cultural exchange in that slot. The show was such a hit that Peterson asked Murphy to keep the spot, and in September that year, she changed the name to Balearic Breakfast.

This June, she releases her first ‘Balearic Breakfast’ compilation, featuring tracks from the likes of Cantoma, Midlife, Lady Blackbird, a suitably soulful remix of P’taah by the much-missed Phil Asher, and Friendly Fires’ motorik-flavoured collaboration with Andrew Weatherall and Timothy J. Fairplay’s The Asphodells. Her liner notes state: “Musically Balearic Breakfast is a bit of a hodge-podge of chillout, spiritual jazz, deep soul, percussive house, quirky disco, indie-dance and what may ‘traditionally’ be called Balearic (whatever that may be).” 

She explains further her feelings about what constitutes Balearic music: “It’s very nebulous in what it is in terms of musical structure. It is more about the feeling it conveys. It’s about musical exploration. Or it should be.”

Jason Boardman, co-founder, alongside Richard ‘Moonboots’ Bithell, of the Mancunian Balearic mainstay Aficionado, concurs. “That’s the idea isn’t it,” he states bluntly when its put to him that at its best Balearic represents a certain musical freedom.

“There’s a preconception that Balearic music is 100bpm, has a chuggy 4/4 beat and after 16 bars the bassline comes in and after 32 bars the Spanish guitar comes in,” he explains. “I really hate that because that’s not what it is. At Aficionado we start off with super-horizontal music and end up at a crazy disco or acid space. And that’s over the course of six-to-eight hours.”

Kenneth Bager, Danish producer, DJ and label boss of the simpatico Music For Dreams, believes that as a musical term it means “expect the unexpected”, explaining it is all about “musical choices”. Dr Rob, the man behind the adventurous music blog Ban Ban Ton Ton, says “really, musically, it’s just a kind of eclecticism.” While Timm Sure, one-half of sonic explorers Coyote and the label Is It Balearic? points to it being a state of mind based upon not following any rules.

“I kind of apply it to everything,” he says. “Anything can be Balearic. Like drinking Estrella out of a toothbrush glass watching the silent jet skis dash across the shimmering sea at lunchtime in Hostal La Torre. Ask me tomorrow and I’ll say something different no doubt.”

DJs Kelvin Andrews and Sean Johnston, meanwhile, both point to Terry Farley’s oft-cited description of Balearic being whatever Alfredo had in his record box and played in Amnesia between 1985 and 1989. 

José Padilla, another one of Balearic’s totemic founding fathers, following his legendary DJ sets at Café del Mar – and the compilations that followed – was emphatic when the question was posed to him, stating: “Balearic is not a kind of music, it’s a way of life. It’s the freedom to play whatever you want, so long as you play it proficiently. People listen to a track with a guitar on it and say: ‘This is Balearic’ when it’s not. Balearic is just the spirit of Ibiza. DJs used to play here seven or eight hours a night and have the freedom to play anything they wanted, from rock to house.”

But that was then. And while tales of Brits having life-changing holidays on the White Isle in the 80s and dancing to Chris Rea will always raise a wry grin, or knowing smirk, as Dr Rob has it: “The term Balearic Beat only really existed in the UK where it was created solely for marketing purposes.” Namely, FFRR’s 1988 ‘Balearic Beats Vol 1’ compilation.

“The days of Alfredo, Leo Mas, José…” says Boardman. “That was a blueprint. We Anglicised the blueprint. So much so that the B word is a difficult term these days. It’s been bastardised. Things masquerade as Balearic.”

Johnston, with his tongue ever-so slightly wedged in his cheek (the inherent ludicrousness of all Balearic discussions never being more than a shuffle away), looks at it in a different light, noting: “Balearic Beat is for life. It’s not just for a summer in the late 80s.”

Has Balearic music had a resurgence in recent years then, or has that spirit of adventure, of shapeshifting musical freedom, always been there? Johnston and Dr Rob both point to people like Boardman and Moonboots, Balearic Mike, Coyote and Phil ‘Cantoma’ Mison as being pivotal in keeping the sounds alive during the 90s.

“They stuck to their musical guns and their particular musical obsession,” says Dr Rob. “The rest of us jumped from bandwagon to bandwagon.”

Another key chapter in the Balearic story was the advent of Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton’s influential DJhistory forum in late 1999. Dr Rob says it reignited the passions of many music lovers as they shared information on “forgotten Alfredo favourites found in local charity shops and IDed tunes on José’s treasured tapes”. It also, crucially, introduced the term Balearic – in a context other than geography – to the rest of the DJing world, he says.

The late-00s gave us the cosmic years. Inspired by the exciting selections of Italian DJ Daniele Baldelli (“He completely fits into the Balearic narrative,” says Andrews. “One of the most inventive DJs of all time) – and popularised on DJhistory – producers such as Prins Thomas (recently described by Piccadilly Records as a Balearic Poster Boy), Hans-Peter Lindstrøm and Todd Terje delivered a sunshine-soaked take on space disco. This was complemented by the likes of Al Usher’s sublime, free-floating ‘Lullaby For Robert’ and Windsurf’s ‘Windsurf EP’ (both released on Thomas’ Internasjonal). Sorcerer and Hatchback (each one half of Windsurf), Rekid, Mark E and Mugwump mined a similarly beatific cosmic house feeling. 

Indeed, the latter’s monumental ‘Boutade’ soon found a home in the incredibly diverse sound being played at a new club in north London’s Stoke Newington: Andrew Weatherall and Sean Johnston’s A Love From Outer Space. A refuge for all manner of leftfield dance music that never knowingly exceeded 122bpm, Johnston believes that ALFOS is on the periphery of Balearic, but admits there is some crossover.

“I certainly felt we were more aligned to Baldelli and the cosmic thing,” he says. “But Andrew said to me on a couple of occasions that when we first started A Love From Outer Space it was the closest thing in terms of musical freedom to Shoom. A friend once described what me and Andrew did as dark Balearic and it’s probably a better description than drug chug or whatever it was people called it. I guess we are the dark side of the shiny Balearic spoon.”

Musical freedom is central to any explanation that captures the spirit, attitude and essence of Balearic music. The Secret DJ coined the term Balearic Silverbacks to describe a certain cabal of beardy, British, middle-aged ravers who despite claiming to be imbued with the Balearic spirit have “taken something that fundamentally means ‘no rules’ and given it a very tight set of rules and have the nerve to tell the Balearics what’s what”. He notes that Balearic isn’t a genre. “It’s a way of choosing.”

As such, daring acts have been committed in its name. Johnston points to one year at the Electric Elephant festival in Croatia when Kelvin Andrews played at the open-air club Barberellas.

“The sun was coming up and he played ‘Grease’ (Frankie Valli),” he enthuses. “Most people would probably hear that and think it sounds cheesy as hell. But at that moment in time, with the sun coming up in the most beautiful courtyard, in this one-level club, with this massive sound system, it was the most Balearic thing you’d ever heard in your life.”

“That was not a planned record,” laughs Andrews. “It was 6am and I was told I could play one more. But a short one. And it just literally appeared on my list. Bang. Just played it. And it went off. People were saying that they would have never thought to play it. I was like: ‘Neither did I!’ It’s the open-air thing in the morning. Anything goes. When Harvey played The Bee Gees’ ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ the following year everyone lost it. It’s having the freedom and the tools to go somewhere when you need to. In terms of DJing anyway. I look at it from the DJing and dancefloor point of view.”

So what about the musicians and producers? Despite it being heralded as arguably the most open-ended and nebulous style of music – in the hands of innovative DJs at least – no one willingly wants to be pigeonholed as Balearic. 

“Someone like Phil Mison and the music he makes as Cantoma is deeply rooted in the sound of The White Isle,” says Dr Rob. “But I’m sure he’d loath to be called Balearic.”

As Boardman alluded to earlier, there is a danger the music termed Balearic can fall into a Café del Mar-type formula. Murphy notes: “The formulaic stuff I find really boring. Ok, this is made for chilling by the pool. It has the same keyboards sounds, it’s in the region of 102-122bpm, there’s no real musical hook… it’s purely functional music. There’s quite a bit of that and that to me is not Balearic because they’re adhering to a formula.”

Mo Morris, one-half of A Mountain Of One, who were tagged everything from Goth Balearic and Prog Balearic to Nu Balearic (alongside Swedish duo Studio whose 2006 album ‘West Coast’ is another important part of this ever-expanding puzzle) when they emerged in the mid-to-late 00s, balks at the description.

“People seemed to suggest it was us putting a Balearic flag in the ground,” he states firmly. “Our first two albums weren’t meant to be Balearic. Yeah, it had that sound. But for me they were alternative rock or alternative dance.”

A Mountain Of One recently released their third album, the majestic ‘Stars Planets Dust Me’, after a gap of over 10 years. A deep, life-affirming record – think Talk Talk at their most intense – it definitely touches upon that open-ended narrative that Balearic music best represents. But not intentionally so. So, maybe the best Balearic music is accidental? 

“100%,” says Morris. “It’s a feeling, isn’t it? Like a Debussy classical record – that gives me the exact same feeling as a Pat Metheny record. Maybe it’s just soul music, then. If it’s touching you that way, it’s touching your soul. It’s not touching your Balearic G-spot because it doesn’t exist. There isn’t one. But people have a soul.”

Boardman is certainly an advocate of inadvertent Balearic. He and Moonboots started Aficionado the label because they wanted to release a Shawn Lee record. The diverse identity they had established from their DJ sets meant they were approached by differing musicians and producers from across the world.

“We’ve released Welsh folk, chillout, Australian ambient, chuggy disco and indie-influenced stuff too – accidental Balearic stuff,” he says.

Dr Rob agrees: “I want to hear – and play – records made by bands that have an energy in them which has made them Balearic by accident. A Scottish industrial act next to a remixed Italian pop star, rather than similarly-sounding soft synth homages created by design.”

Today, the acts that fall under this banner cast their net far and wide. Granted, they might not want to be pigeonholed with the term. Although as label bosses Coyote astutely note it can come in handy with record shops, just look on Phonica or Piccadilly Records’ website for proof. But artists as varied as Mudd, Pippi & Willie Graff, Max Essa, Tornado Wallace, Maribou State, Khruangbin, Mushrooms Project, Poolside, Jonny Nash, Suzanne Kraft, the various guises of Andras Fox (Wilson Tanner and Art Wilson among them), Jura Soundsystem, Mind Fair, islandman, Residentes Balearicos, Yu Su, Idjut Boys, Be.Lanuit, Begin and Rheinzand all have some Balearic essence about them. Accidental or not. 

“I listened to the new Rheinzand album,” says Balearic stalwart Leo Elstob, who was in an early incarnation of A Mountain Of One and constructs beautiful remixes and re-edits as Leo Zero. “I contacted Kenneth (Bager) asking to do a remix of that Level 42 cover (‘Love Games’), because the back end of that is just heaven. A wonky, new beat take on Level 42.”

He goes on to praise acts like Gabriels (“Modern bluesy, disco-meets-soul”), Rita Ray (“She’s got a bit of that Stevie Nicks, Carly Simon-sound going on. Very purist soul. She’s from Estonia”) and Lou Hayter (“She’s got it. She knows the whole thing back to front”).

“Maybe it’s more labels that act as an umbrella for various artists who could be better described by the word,” points out Dr Rob. “Kenneth Bager’s Music For Dreams for example, home to Rheinzand, who aren’t Balearic, but just make brilliant European pop. These imprints act as curators. We’re back to Balearic by accident rather than design.”

Bager, Coyote, Boardman and Elstob cite labels like: Higher Love, Growing Bin, NuNorthern Soul, Music For Dreams, Is It Balearic?, Claremont 56, Italy’s Archeo and Isle of Jura in Australia as being exemplars of leftfield, adventurous electronic dance music. 

One can’t overlook the more chilled strain of modern Balearic music either. Last year, Ali Tillett, from booking agents Warm, compiled the extraordinarily soothing ‘Home Vol 1’. A chance to bring music, art and nature together – horizontally-friendly tracks by World of Apples, Coyote, Âme, Richard Norris, Kirk Degiorgio and Crack’d Man are complemented by field recordings of ships’ horns, owls and waves lapping to the shore – it’s a properly immersive and contemplative experience. One might refer to it as sonic mindfulness, a phrase that wouldn’t be out of place when critiquing a Chris Coco compilation for instance.

“Sonic mindfulness is a good shout,” says Tillett. “I have always loved nature and art alongside music, and it was just that moment (the pandemic) where I could take a breath from day-to-day work and put the release together.”

Releases such as ‘Home Vol 1’ also shine a light on the camaraderie that exists among the musicians, producers and DJs that float in and out of this orbit. Back in the late-80s and early-90s, a so-called Balearic Network existed in the UK. It’s still there. From Man Power’s nights in Newcastle (recently attended by Harvey and Sean Johnston) and London’s peripatetic We Are The Sunset’s loose-limbed gatherings to the pub shindigs hosted by St Leonards-on-Sea’s Marina Fountain and Todmorden’s Golden Lion, a community of like-minded artists continue to determinedly plough their passions. And these days, thanks to the internet, it’s a global network too.

It’s not just the preserve of middle-aged folk either. Last year, Alfredo, Colleen Murphy and Bill Brewster (“The elders,” jokes Murphy) played alongside John Gomez, Ruf Dug, Jonny Nash, Zakia and Mafalda at the A Balearic Beat Hotel event in Ibiza.

“There were all these different ages of people contributing,” recalls Murphy, “and it all worked. Different generations, different racial backgrounds, different genders – and the younger people fitted in perfectly. All of their sounds were eclectic.”

It’s this pan-generational cross-fertilization that feeds the Balearic story. Balearic is not a genre, but an attitude, a feeling, a spirit. Lines can be drawn between different eras and different sounds, but they’re not straight. They are dots on a journey. Dance music’s culture of remixing has borne some of Balearic’s greatest sounds. To wit: Johnston’s recent Hardway Bros’ makeover of David Holmes’ ‘It’s Over If We Run Out Of Love’ and Rheinzand’s transformation of Lou Hayter’s ‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’.

“The repurposing of pop records has been absolutely central to this thing. Crooked Man doing over Amy Douglas (2018’s ‘Never Saw It Coming) and Soulwax’s rework of Fontaines D.C. (‘A Hero’s Death’) are two recent instances that immediately spring to mind,” says Dr Rob.

At the end of the day – as the sun begins to set – Johnston believes you can just sniff Balearic out. The proof of the pudding being in the eating rather than theorising about it. His mind goes back to playing the Crooked Man remix of Amy Douglas at Convenanza. He’d been sent the track that day and hadn’t heard it played loud. He also knew Weatherall hadn’t heard it.

“As soon as I heard it, I knew it was Balearic,” he smiles. “Andrew turned to me and said: ‘What is this? It’s Balearic as fuck!’”

The story continues… 

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This article first appeared in issue one of Disco Pogo.

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