Elrow is the Club Of The Year

“Més que un club” – that’s the motto emblazoned on the stadium seats of the Camp Nou, home of the world famous futbol club, Barcelona. It translates into English as “more than a club”, which is a phrase that can equally be applied to Elrow, the world-conquering party brand that today welcomes Mixmag to the 4,000-capacity venue on the city outskirts, 10 miles south of the iconic stadium, to celebrate Halloween.

For Elrow isn’t just a club. That’s clear from the apocalyptic scenes that greet us upon entry. A 20-strong crew of workers has been present morning to night for the past seven days to lavishly decorate the venue. Across its three indoor dancefloors, cloak-clad ghouls and vampires hang from the ceilings, monstrous inflatable witches and tarantulas are strapped to bar roofs, and one DJ booth is in the shape of a demonic fanged skull, while the sandyfloored, open-air Ker Terrace out the back also provides a more traditional clubbing option if desired. On the Terrace a giant skeleton puppet on stilts wades through the throng of dancing bodies, breaking character for a moment to pump its bony fist to the grooves powering out of the system. The scene is a whirlwind of colour and energy, and this transfers directly into the crowd, whose enthusiasm levels barely dip below frenzied across the 13-hour event, kept at optimum by the unerring soundtrack of uplifting, vibrant sounds aired by the DJs.

As the steady thump of house beats merges with the tones of an undead string quartet, who are being lightly whipped with a cat o’ nine tails by a pirate, it’s apparent that the scene is as much as an interactive theatre experience as it is a dance party. And every party with Elrow is Halloween. Every party has this level of immersive riot of colour, the actors, the inflatables, the confetti that falls like rain in a thunderstorm. Hell, when they took over the Mixmag Lab they brought a full-on club spec confetti cannon to shower our office. We’re still finding bits of it months later.

In a dance music climate where a dark, uber-cool, unadorned, artist-focused industrial aesthetic is fetishized above all else, where the same hugely remunerated headline DJs are the one metric that promoters truly believe can shift tickets on any sort of scale, Elrow shouldn’t be the biggest story in dance music. Its brash, bright, experiential, OTT style is more redolent of Manumission in its 90s heyday than the dour techno vibe that dominates everywhere in 2016. But as things stand, at the close of the year, Elrow has completed a third and final residency at the late, great Space Ibiza, hosted a 25,000-capacity stage at Dreambeach festival, and sold out events on a globe-trotting route from Buenos Aires to Dubai. It is the most talked-about club on social media and its worldwide shows sell out in minutes – there were 27,000 ticket applications for the most recent London show. Next year a series of link-ups with some of the biggest and coolest festival worldwide means they will be even bigger. It’s quite clearly the runaway candidate for club of the year.

Elrow refers to the party brand that originated in the venue, and has since risen up to become a global force. The family behind the business also has a connection to their work that runs far deeper than your average promoter. They have a history in entertainment stretching back six generations to 1870, from a humble town café through projects such as the respected Florida 135 club to the 40,000 attendees strong Monegros Desert Festival. Patriarch Juan Snr was the first promoter to bring techno to Spain. Their tale has been almost Shakespearean in its unfolding, with politically forbidden love and destructive infernos among the strands running through the family’s colourful background, but one stable factor has been a genuine desire to provide fun. In recent years this has crystallised in the form of a no-holds-barred concept that uses unparalleled production levels to go the extra mile, and then some, in curating an audience-centred experience of partying.

“It’s not a club any more,” says Juan Arnau Jr, CEO and co-founder of Elrow, alongside his sister Cruz, from a side office in the company’s Barcelona base as music pulsates through the walls. “It’s an event location,” he clarifies, noting the happenings that go down once monthly that transcend any standard idea of what clubbing is. And this is something the Arnaus have had to redefine in order to succeed. They have now struck gold with Elrow, but it hasn’t been an easy ride.

Elrow began life as Row 14, a house and techno club that booked the world’s finest underground selectors. Despite the likes of Laurent Garnier and Sven Väth playing there in its opening months, the project was a failure. “In the first three years we lost a lot of money. I think because the market was oversaturated, coming to see DJs was not as special any more,” explains Juan Jr. It forced a total rethink. The idea to put on parties that began in the morning and ran through the day was put forward, and an early image of Elrow was born.

But the Arnaus couldn’t let go of the underground. At the start of 2013 they opened Ker, catering to a slightly older and more discerning crowd through high-end service and bookings such as Vakula, Mathew Jonson and Mr G. “I wanted to build a deep underground scene in Barcelona,” Juan Jr says. But the project was marred by property disagreements, as well as a general downturn in public clubbing interest.

Meanwhile, Elrow’s Sunday sessions were shut down by the authorities, forcing a return to night-time parties. After a year, the family propositioned the council with a request for 12 day-time licenses a year so they could throw one special all-day event each month. Their wish was granted. With the onus taken off throwing home town parties every single weekend, Elrow set its sights on the world and began to flourish into the behemoth it is today.

The rise of Elrow reflects the ethos behind the brand to recognise the shifting desires of punters and strive to provide them with as fun an experience as possible. “In the past 15 years, promoters, including us, became lazy. It was easy to pay a DJ and get a fee and know how much money you were making. Now it’s different,” says Juan Jr. “You need something else.”

As Elrow has evolved, the audience has remained the key focus. Handing out toys and inflatables has been a feature from the start, and it soon became apparent the crowds loved the props. “I remember one guy who had been handed a spool of wool, then all of sudden we were in the middle of the dance floor and everyone was wrapped in wool and freaking out, like, who the hell is doing this?! It was just a customer!” recalls Juan Jr with a grin. After noticing this dimension to the parties, actors were added to the mix to “help [the audience] get even crazier.” Next came Elrow’s mindblowing levels of decoration, completing the formula.

Indulging the senses in a club is nothing new, but Elrow’s recipe combines to form an experience that is unlike any other in the sphere of dance music. There are 300 people working onsite at the Halloween event, including 100 actors. “Often our audience loses all connection with time,” says Head of Performers Niccolo Grazioso, describing the role his department plays in transporting the dancefloor to a realm beyond reality.

At times it becomes hard to differentiate between crowd members and actors, with everyone in sight throwing themselves head first into the chaos. But while the spectacular production and a focus on experience is one part of Elrow’s appeal, the music and programming is the second element, and the reason why Elrow hits that sweet spot every time. A well thought-out booking policy that focuses like a laser on those DJs who fit as ‘Elrow DJs’, who share the same spirit of abandon, means a stable of regulars that include Eats Everything, Seth Troxler, Joris Voorn and Patrick Topping.

As the confetti cannons fire their final payload over the crowd and midnight draws in, hands raise fervently to the heavens in the engulfing flurry of paper. Dancers lose themselves in a scene that Santé, one of the artists on the bill (note: not headliner, that’s a title reserved for the crowd), describes as “like being in a colourful cave”. It remains completely packed inside right up until the final beat, and whistles of appreciation ring out for a long time before the crowd slowly and unwillingly accept the return of reality and head to the exits, still tangibly thrilled from the day’s dancing-cum-adventure.

“Promoters need to be more creative in order to survive in the industry now. I think the market is going to kick out people who don’t really love the business, or love helping people have fun or be happy,” Juan Jr told us earlier that afternoon. Seeing the CEO immersed in the thick of the action, sporting a nasty-looking faux wound on his forehead, just reinforces Elrow’s real secret: they don’t just throw parties. They live them.

Patrick Hinton is Mixmag's Digital Staff Writer, follow him on Twitter