For a live series of events called Ibiza Rocks, a series of events that has perhaps veered a little more towards pop music this season, it was refreshing to see a lineup so focused on proper bands with proper instruments. From Tom Vek to Noah and the Whale the stage was littered with lads in fitted suits, assumed coolness and attitude.
There has been much debate on Spotlight and about the island as to how welcome this new wave of live music is. There has a mixed reception about events such as Ibiza Rocks, Privilege Live and I Want My MTV from the core of die-hard dance music lovers, but I'm all for it, with cultural and musical diversity important to the island.
Tom Vek was first on with his band playing through their latest tour. Oddly Tom had been missing for the last 5 or so years since his We Have Sound album in 2005, and so it has been good to see news popping up of upcoming tour dates everywhere, and luckily one of such dates was in Ibiza. Tracks played during the set came from his latest album; ‘Leisure Seizure', which by all accounts is in a similar vein to his first, which is good news! The favourite of which had to be their latest release, ‘A Chore'. The track is a little fuller in sound and anthemic in nature than many of the other tracks, which certainly played well to the Ibiza Rocks Crowd.
The normal setup for these gigs is to have a band, then DJ, then band. However with Noah and The Whale and Zane Lowe still to come, it did make sense to not have Zane come on between the two bands and smash the place into pieces with dubstep etc only for Noah and The Whale to come on a bring the tone right down with their melodic indie folk pleasantries.
British band Noah and The Whale play simply beautiful music, albeit with a slightly American accent in some lyrics, prompting some people to comment that they did at times sounds similar to Bruce Springstein. But for the most part it's a none stop indie folk party with layer upon layer of perfectly sung live vocals. The perfect example of this would be their recently released track ‘Life is Life' (on Mercury Records), which sounded just as good as it does when you watch the video on their YouTube channel. Another firm favourite with both myself and the now packed out Ibiza Rocks Hotel crowd would be ‘L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.', also from their latest album ‘Last Night on Earth'. You will have undoubtedly heard this track playing out on the radio since it's release in January which you can credit for the crowds sing-a-long reaction to this and many of the other tracks. It was a shame then for the set to only last 40 minutes, which I can only presume was shorter than originally planned.
Saving the mildly crazy man from the southern hemisphere for last, on came Zane Lowe who was more akin to a hip-hop/mc/rapper in how he performed whilst looking like your stereotypical indie kid, complete with ‘I've got attitude, yo' hoody.
Zane was dropping every genre of music that Ibiza Rocks is used to, from house, electro, drum ‘n' bass, dubstep, metal, hip hop and more… much like his show on Radio 1. It's a popular show due to his opinion on music- “none of this pop shit!”The crowd loved it and he effectively had them by their ear lobes from then onwards. Musical examples from his set include various Nirvana tracks, the dubstep/drum ‘n' bass track DJ Fresh ft Sian Evans ‘Louder', and Benny Bennasi's ‘Cinema' track. But to be honest, after all this, my favourite moment was still looking over to my right from the press balcony to see literally one of the sexiest things I've ever seen… two 50+ women skanking their arses off. That shit was hot!
