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Double LP version. 180 gram vinyl. Gatefold jacket. Compiled by Pete Gooding and Mark Barrott. No matter the season or the nationality, every day on Ibiza, tribute is paid to Carthaginian deity Tanit at sunset. The warrior goddess of dance, fertility, creation and destruction lords over the Balearic island, as she has for centuries. Phoenicians, Assyrians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Arabs, and even the Norwegians have conquered the island since ancient times and every summer that history plays out, a similar array of nationalities descending on the island anew. Yet the soul of Ibiza remains intact. Every sunset still ushers in her arrival; that singular, sacred time on the island, taking on the feel of a pagan ritual, a shift in consciousness - the end of the beginning. For those who make the pilgrimage looking for this transformative experience, it requires little more than venturing away from the Vegas-like lights of San Antonio towards such sublimity. Tucked away on the west coast of the island, Hostel La Torre beckons with its beauty and "vista spectacular", encompassing the essence of that authentic Balearic spirit, as pioneered by Alfredo Fiorito at Amnesia and José Padilla at Café del Mar in the early '80s. But this is not an exercise in nostalgia, rather a journey that seeks to reframe Balearic music in the present moment by embracing that "anything goes" spirit via the avant-garde of Finis Africae's "Managua", rare classics like the Arabic pop funk of Ahmed Fakroun's "Nisyan" and Cameroonian poetry of Francis Bebey's "Forest Nativity", with the proto ambient house of Spooky's "Orange Coloured Liquid" and modern productions like Dominique Dumont's "Comme Ça", Andras's "Gold Coast" and Mark Barrott's "Deep Water". Balearic in its truest form is all these things and much more, it's cosmopolitan and countercultural, international yet wholly specific to a singular place on Earth. It lights upon and encapsulates all the evocative beauty of Ibiza, the sounds themselves matching the color palette of the island. The red dirt hills and the white sands, the pink blooms of almond trees and the electric blue of the water surrounding Es Vedrà, the raw beauty of Ibiza is all here. At its root, Balearic music is always experiential. Also features: Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Cantoma, Barry Forgie, Il Guardiano Del Fa Ro, Tri Atma Und Gyan, Planet Funk, Gryningen Frün Andra and Hatchback.
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