Carl Cox on PURE: 'All you’re going to get is a raw soundsystem, some lighting and great DJs'

Cox took PURE to Privilege, Ibiza, for two nights last year, but the concept won't return in 2018. "Privilege hasn’t been used as a nightclub or rave-orientated night for 15 years, since the years of Manumission, so when we woke that place up with our ideas of what we did in Australia, it was a major success, purely based on what I believed in and it worked really well. We won’t be going back unfortunately to Ibiza this year because Privilege has other ideas of what they want to do with their dates. So, you know what? We made a statement, we made a point, we pulled it off, it was great, people now know in Europe and the rest of the world what we’re all about, plus I want to try and keep it as primarily in Australia and New Zealand as much as I can. This never really was a worldwide agenda. This was always something I wanted people to feel a part of on this side of the world. So, to me that’s great, I still get to play Privilege anyway through playing for Ultra, which is stroke Resistance, so people still get me playing there anyway, but under the guise of what they’re doing."

As for life in Australia, Cox couldn't be happier hanging out around Frankston, on the Mornington Peninsula, about an hour outside central Melbourne: "I’m very well settled here. I really do enjoy the fact I’m able to spread my wings on all accounts on everything that I put my hand to and feel good about the decision to be here more than anywhere else in the world."

He added: "I’ve been coming here now for over 20 years and all the time that I’ve toured here I always enjoyed being in Melbourne, and one of my first singles that I worked on I was actually working with John Course in his studio here on the (Mornington) Peninsula, which I didn’t know as that many years ago. I did a track called ‘Eternal’ and it was a big hit record and stuff like that and it was amazing that I had already been here subliminally, without actually knowing where I was, and then I eventually found out that the Peninsula was the place where I made this music in Australia. I think it was something that called me back. It was just brilliant that I was able to come here initially and then turn a key to my own home and as soon as I bought my home here that was it. So, you know, I have no desire to live anywhere else in the world and Australia was a place I always had a kind of affinity and a love for, so I think it’s the natural order for me to be here. I mean, I’ve got plenty of my friends that live in Barcelona, that live in Singapore, or Berlin, or live in Ibiza, and I’m like ‘no, I’m going to go as far away from you lot as possible and live in Australia and have my own life,’ and that’s what I’ve created.

Catch Frankston local Carl Cox with Paco Osuna, Nastia, Fabio Neural and Eric Powell at PURE next month. Dates and cities below.

20/4 - Logan Campbell Centre, Auckland

21/4 - Festival Hall, Melbourne

24/4 - Metro City, Perth

27/4 - Family, Brisbane

28/4 - Hordern Pavilion, Sydney

Scott Carbines is Mixmag's Australian Digital Content Editor, follow him on Twitter