Club review: Carnival Opening Party @ Sankeys Ibiza

Jack Law heads back to Sankeys for the opening night of Carnival with Craig Richards, Infinity Ink, Matt Tolfrey, Russ Yallop and more.

Jayne Robinson

Date published: 10th Jul 2012

Sankeys' night Carnival began last Saturday, marking the proper start of their Ibizan season for this year. Carnival began with a line up of deep house legends - some more recent to the game than others - to set the high standards that are to follow over the rest of the summer.

We got to the club at about half 12 to be greeted by a really long guest list queue. Sankeys give out a lot of guestlist, mainly to workers, and to accommodate for the rest of the season they could do with making some sort of adjustment to the guestlist entrance, otherwise we will be queueing for a good 45 minutes to an hour every time.

Kubicle (in the Basement) played host to Infinity Ink first of all, who performed one of their live sets which have quickly become known for being pretty damn good. They've had a few appearances in Ibiza to date, playing the opening for new club Plan Be where their set had garnered a very positive response. Tonight was no different as the duo, made up of Hot Natured heads Luca C & Ali Love, performed some of their biggest hits including big favourite 'Different Morals', that were warmly appreciated by the crowd.

Fellow deep house hitters Fur Coat came on next, smashing out a range of psychedelic and trippy tunes alongside well known tunes from that style of deep house like Art Department's 'Tell Me Why'. As their set went on they delved into techier realms which I hadn't expected, but it certainly went down well. They built the atmosphere in the club right up with a powerful warm up for one of London club Fabric's main men, Craig Richards.

Richards' mixing was something special, taking us down both dark and light techy paths across the two or so hours that he played. He played Kenny Larkin's Tension remix of Kevin Saunderson's 'Future' (which has very quickly become a very big Ibiza hit) to a jumping crowd, another highlight being Kink and Neville Watson's 'A Saturday In November'. He was using the volume limits to his advantage to achieve an extra dimension to the set, quickly bringing the tune out and back in for the drops to add effect. He wasn't playing just one tune after the other, but really working them in together.

Matt Tolfrey had brought his Leftroom label to Spektrum to help open Carnival. With him came tech magician Jay Haze, whilst Departure headliner Russ Yallop also spun some tunes. We caught a bit of Tolfrey's bouncey tech house but unfortunately didn't see much of the Spektrum room as we were having too much fun in the Basement. Long time player Chez Damier had been scheduled to showcase the sounds of Detroit house but for whatever reason hadn't managed to make it.

Overall it had been a good night, but that's twice now that I've been to Sankeys Ibiza where one of the big names of the night hasn't played for whatever reason (the last time it was Heidi at Kaluki vs Krankbrother) and the queuing has been quite long. The content of the night had been great, but it wasn't 100% there as it should have been. Despite that, we can safely say Sankeys have a bright future in Ibiza, and this season they are really pulling it off the majority of the time.