Balearic Gabba Soundsystem Talk

Music

Earlier this year, our ears were alerted – read; we were bribed with vinyl – to the Balearic Gabba Sound System releases on Kenneth Bager's Music For Dreams label. We dug deeper.

Described as a "non-sense dream team" BGSS are a loose collective 'collected' by the Hell Yeah label head Marco "peeDoo" Gallerani and composed of some interesting characters including a Mr Bjorn Torske and loose collaborators such as Prins Thomas.

"Balearic music is kaleidoscope of genres. Balearic Gabba Sound System just enlarge the boundaries."

We caught up with Marco to chat all things BGS…

What is a Balearic Gabba Soundsystem.

I would say a stoned collective of like minded nerdy music/food/drinks lovers/losers and sometime party harders.

In the early 2000s I was travelling a lot to London… I went to Sunday Best, rob Da Bank's party at Tea des Artists in Clapham Common…
I got fascinated by the vibe, the fact that many DJs where going there to play eclectic DJ sets, not necessarily the music they were known for…

I wasn't into chill-out, I hated it… I started to daydream about it with my friend E-the-Hot, we put together this mix…

Look Back: Balearic Gabba Sound System – peeDoo & E-The-Hot – 78 minutes in the summer of 2003 by The Ransom Note on Mixcloud

Then he moved to live in Amsterdam and I've added Balearic Gabba in my DJ bio to describe the music i was playing at the time… I've always been the warm-up guy, welcome the first punter, play crazy shit and leave the DJ booth to the DJ after me in a state where as soon as he would have played a 4/4 record the whole place would have gone mental…

Describe the dream team that makes up BGS. I gather Bjorn Torske is part of your collective?

Enzo Elia is one of the best Italian house DJ of the new generation for music selection, mixing skills and ability to read a crowd, a step in the past and one in the future. I would not recommend him enough.

Everest Parisi is one of my best friends too, we had many brainstormings about my Balearic Gabba vision… he's been pivotal about the logo, the dinosaurs and he introduced me to Italian artist Federico Lanaro who designed the logo and all the sleeves included the comp for Music for Dreams…

Bjorn is our mentor, a true inspiration, a music genius, a fantastic DJ… you can't love Bjorn can you go more Balearic than this?

This has been the intro of every BG DJ set, a call to army for Balearic gabbers

It's like an extended family… it's great when respected friends want to be be part of the sound system, it happened for the Prins Thomas release… the Norwegians seem to like our sense of humour…

Jon Sa Trinxa and Jose Padilla in a Balearic face off, who would win?

That's a hard one… I've only read about Jose Padilla and I eventually bought some records from him via Discogs… I experienced Jon Sa Trinxa playing and I have to say that the way he programmes music is genius. He makes you like records that you'd probably hate in a different context. He also wrote the best words to describe the Balearic:

"It's like try to define the indefinable"

What is Balearic? Is there any of it left on the white isle or does it live on in other sun blessed corners of the world?

I really don't know much about it, Balearic can be played everywhere… it took 40 years before i got to visit Ibiza properly. It's always been the cool record that you can dance to without forcing you to the dancefloor.

You also run the excellent Hell Yeah recordings but we'll come back to that, why was this album released on Music For Dreams and what's your relationship with the label.

I have always been a fan of Music for Dreams, Banzai Republic, Cantoma, DJ Disse… Nordic crazy stuff. Kenneth Bager invited me and Enzo to play at his Music for Dreams Sunday party at Cafe Mambo in Ibiza last summer…

Left to Right: Marco (so happy he pissed into his pants), Jon Sa trinxa, Enzo Elia, Kenneth Bager

He introduced us to the real freaky, Balearic Ibiza outside of the commercial marketed circuit we all have been used to know: it's magic!

I can never thank him enough, I learned a lot about programming daytime music during that stay… we even ended up at Ricardo Villalobos's secret birthday party!

Impressive track listing and a rather fine album. How did you go about picking the tracks that make up the album.

The idea was basic, showcase our taste and catalogue. So it's a mix of the most successful BG edits by Enzo, some all-time classics from the DFC catalogue (Mr Marvin – Entity is kinda untouchable)… an incredible jazz version by 3io of Royksopp's Eple and a crazy acid terrace cover of Pacific 202. Balearic… isn't?

Enzo's edits feature heavily on the album. Can you talk us through his influence he's had on the BGS.

One day I suggested him a bunch of tunes out of DFC catalogue that I liked and he came back with a few edits… when i decided to start the project, he's been an obvious choice… as a big Unkle – Psyence Fiction fan, I like to 'jameslavelle' the whole project and Enzo is the perfect DJ Shadow for this.

How much do you love the Balearic aesthetic of music and production.

I like to be surprised when I hear a DJ, I like DJs who take risks… I'm more into the eclectic musical programming than the production side.

How much do you love Gabba? Best Gabba record ever?

Gabba and hardcore techno were my punk when I was 18 years old, you like raw stuff at that time…

My first DJ gig outside of Italy has been in 1995 at "Dead By Dawn" a squat party in Brixton run by Christph Fringeli of Praxis fame…
I was selecting a mix of french-core (Manu le Malin, Laurent Ho), Digital Hardcore recordings (Alec Empire's label) and dutch gabber.

This is a top 5 of my fave ever

Turbulence – Six millions way to die

Rotterdam Remix Project – Loving You (X-rated Version)

ILSA GOLD – Silke

Nasty Django & DJ Cirillo – Cocorico

E-de-Cologne – Dance Now

The perfect track for a Balearic Gabba sunset

Anything by E-The-Hot… but especially this one…

Anything else we should've discussed but haven't?

We are moving onto original productions. the edit game doesn't make for us anymore… we have an edit 12" planned, then we are going to extend the sound system… we have just closed one track for next instalment of Moon Rock, that excellent album on Throne Of Blood… it will be our debut. And if you are in Italy on June 15th… we throw this Sunday party…