Carl Cox on Ibiza 2017: "I'm going in there to rip it up like I used to"

So what can those 6-8000 people expect from your Pure parties?

Here in Australia it’s a no-nonsense, stripped down ideal of what I believe a party should be about at the end of the day. When you go to an EDM party you do get all the fireworks, confetti. You get all the music, sound to light everything matching, all the colours matching. You get all the drops and all the risers in time with all the balloon drops and the CO2 and you get all of the hullaballoo and the most amazing LED light systems you’ve ever seen in your life and I’m saying you’re not going to get any of that. All I’m saying is you’re going to get a great soundsystem, music played by great DJs and all you’re going to get is a minimalistic ideal of what we used to do back in the day when we used to do warehouse parties. This is what I really, really want to get people to understand at the end of the day: that you don’t pull your phone out because there’s fireworks going off. You don’t pull your phone out because there are three DJs standing on top of the turntables or the CDJs or even their laptop and telling people to jump, jump, jump. We’re not doing any of that stuff. We’re stripping it down and getting people to hear raw unadulterated techno and house music. If you’re not into it, I would just say “don’t come down, don’t bother”.

You walk through the door and you’re gonna hear a bassline. You’re gonna hear DJs really playing from the heart and soul, they have to. It’s a big room, there’s no messing around at Privilege. You’ve got to give it to them. Go hard or go home. It’s no fancy night out.

Exactly the way it should be.

Well, I think we just lost sight of it. As soon as people go to any of these clubs, the first thing they want is to be like “where can we all sit?” What? Where can we all sit? No way, I don’t want anyone sitting down in my club, I want people up and on their toes and basically supporting the music and the scene and what we love. The thing is with Privilege is it’s a big room; it’s a big atmosphere. I mean, I’m a big DJ, I play big tunes, I smash the place. I’m not going in there to play 122bpm deep house music, I’m going in there to rip it up like I used to do, like I will do and continue to do soon to make that statement.

This is a new era now. We’re moving things forward. Ibiza is changing and it’s not changing for the bad, it’s changing for the good everyone is cleaning up their act. They want people in their clubs spending money. They want people walking away from Ibiza going “you know what? This place is still on the map and it still rocks.”