Review: Enter vs Cadenza @ Space, Ibiza, 13/09/12

At the start of this year's Ibiza season, Richie Hawtin announced the beginning of his own night on the White Isle, Enter at Space, with a series of Minus/Kehakuma line ups that would span across July to September. One of those line ups simply said: Enter vs ?.

After four months of patiently waiting for the Enter vs ? concept to be unravelled, the announcement finally came in early September. Ideas had been bounced back and forth between those that were particularly enthusiastic for the event, with the top two thoughts being Enter vs Circoloco and Enter vs Desolat...

Yet what we hadn't thought of was possibly the most obvious and most exciting answer: Enter vs Cadenza. Each label has gone from strength to strength across the season, each with their own team of unique individuals that are all on top of their game. The head honchos are good pals and have been a part of the same scene for years now and the clubs, well they stand directly opposite each other!

Ushuaia

Gaiser wasted no time in smashing out his sound to the masses gathered on the dance floor before him. The unique minimal techno rolled heavy bass across the crowd toward all corners of the hotel as he improvised with his impressive selection of tools and tunes, including Oolooloo, Flashed and Unstable Witness. This wasn't the first live set we'd seen from Gaiser this summer and each time is as refreshing as the last. He works the tunes together in very different ways, keeping things very interesting.

When the clock struck 9pm, the crowd were more than ready for Luciano vs Hawtin. Since the announcement of the Minus/Cadenza collab, this back to back performance has easily been the most anticipated of the season - and they were going to do it twice in one night! The Ushuaia b2b could be described as a bit of fun and games; Luciano and Hawtin taking it in turns to rifle through a few Cadenza tracks and a few Minus tracks, respectively. There wasn't any real flow, it was more of a bounce around of the two sounds, but they were having a great time and so were the crowd. Hawtin was dropping bass heavy bombs like Daphni's 'Ye Ye' whilst Luciano kepts things strictly Latin with personal favourites, such as his own remix of Inner City & Kevin Saunderson's 'Good Love'.

Of course, there were plenty of visuals and special effects going on, with bursts of fire, ice cannons, dancers, trapeze artists and even Enter/Cadenza confetti (black dots and red dots) which were blasted all over the crowd towards the end. There's certainly never a dull moment in Ushuaia!

An exciting addition to Playa d'en Bossa were the Space and Ushuaia tunnels that had been constructed through the day to guide revellers from the first part of the night to the next. Both the pink tunnel leading away from Ushuaia and the blue tunnel leading up to Space were complete with more trapeze artists and more falling confetti – it was a cool way to connect the two clubs. 

Space

We arrived at Space just in time to catch the last half an hour of Reboot's live set on la Terraza, which was incredible as usual. The packed dance floor lapped up his unique Latin beats as he worked through remixes and edits of his own sexy tech house, including his rendition of James Brown's 'Fever' which never fails to create a massive energy across the crowd, before he finished with his clicky remix of the Villalobos favourite 'Easy Lee'.

Onto the main room, where Minus man Hobo was smashing out some flavoursome minimal techno in preparation for the main double act's second performance. He warmed the crowd up into a frenzy with groovy bass, trippy beeps and bleeps with a host of distorted vocals. Recent additions to the Minus crew like Hobo and also Matador have been working closely with Hawtin to bring the sound of Minus forward with a fresh edge to it, and that is what we have been hearing at Enter for the last 12 weeks.

In no time at all, the time had come again for the label masters to get back to it with their second back to back of the evening. It's always exciting when two DJs play together, even more so when they are two of the biggest DJs in Ibiza and both have their own very unique sounds; it gives them the chance to play off eachother's styles and delve into areas that they might not very often. In Space, this is exactly what they did...

It felt like there was much more thought from Hawtin and Luciano when it came to their tune selections, as the Enter vs Cadenza theme became an amalgamation, like CadEnter or Entenza (or something to that effect!). What I mean by this is that you couldn't pinpoint either sound specifically, as the two DJs merged them together in such a way. Luciano was playing up to Hawtin with more of a harder sound such as Shneider & Galluzzi's monster track 'Albertino' and Kat Williams and Angel Freakin's acid heavy 'That Track By Kat', which fit in perfectly with Hawtin's bass laden, minimal tech.

The two played together for the rest of the night, and finding the right words to describe their performance is tricky. Perhaps the words 'incredible' and 'once in a lifetime' just about sum it up. Safe to say that the thousands of clubbers that were a part of the night will not forget it in a hurry. 

We wonder what surprises will be in store for next season, or even in the meantime. More collaborations, perhaps? We hope so. 

The countdown for Ibiza 2013 has already begun.

Words: Jack Law 

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