031 Hi Paco, it’s a pleasure chatting with you, your NOW HERE concept is a vindication of the present, but to know how to appreciate the present you have to know the past, that past that has made you one of the most important national artists of all time. We are going to start with something that very few people may know, is it true that at the end of the nineties a tape with your music came into the hands of a person in Ibiza and that made you start on the island? Yes it’s correct! At that time I was living and studying my degree in Valencia, and through a person who was a friend of my family and worked at Amnesia, I sent that music tape to Martín Ferrer from Amnesia. A short time later, Martín called me in person to tell me to come to Ibiza to form part of the crew of DJs. Many people affirm that the first season in Ibiza is the one that marks you the most, how was that first season? What surprised you the most? Well, to tell you the truth, it was very hard and even frustrating at times. Since at that time the DJs, or at least for Amnesia, were the last thing to be valued. I remember that in the opening I was only able to play the last 20-30 minutes of the session, I didn’t expect that, although it was also true that I was the last DJ to form part of the team. But I had a very bad time since all my friends from Valencia and Barcelona had come to see my debut, (laughs). Then little by little I began to understand my role in the club and little by little I reverted it, at the end of that first season I was already the first resident in the main room (which at that time was the Club Room and not The Terrace). In positive terms, what surprised me the most was the freedom that you felt on the island and the energy there was in each party. I came from very different places (Barcelona & Valencia) and they had nothing to do with what I experienced in Ibiza that year. I remember that it was extremely hard because I would get to Amnesia at 11 at night and leave when the club closed - in those days they did not have a fixed closing time - and I worked every day without having a single day off, at the end of the season I was exhausted (laughs). It is one thing to be a DJ and quite another to be a professional DJ. Were your years in Amnesia the ones that taught you the profession? Not entirely, but it did have a great impact on my vision of music and the way I understand a DJ session. In those years being a resident DJ - or at least my role at Amnesia - was to open the session and be in the booth all night in case the guest DJ had a problem or needed something, in fact at the beginning of the season they made me sign a paper to say that I was in charge of the booth if something was missing or broken, I basically had to be a watchman all night (laughs). However, the musical level enriched me a lot and taught me to be able to manage a dance floor in any context. I could do the opening for Sven Väth, for Tiësto or Erick Morillo, or I had to play commercial music during the foam party, that gave me a great musical diversity and the ability to function in any situation or environment. So it was like a school of learning, which has helped me throughout my career. Cocoon, ENTER, Music On, you have been involved in the best parties in the history of Ibiza, what did you learn in those years and from working with such important brands? What I learned was a lot, both musically and technically. I still remember the first time I saw Richie Hawtin play with an AKAI sampler, the 909, a delay module and I said to myself: how much you still have to learn! So that’s what I always tried to do, learn, learn from the best and apply it to my way of DJing. I have always believed that the day I think I know everything and stop being interested in continuing to learn will be the first day of the end of my career. Obviously I also carry with me all those experiences, the great people I have met and the great friends I have made. Marco Carola is one of my best friends, with Richie Hawtin I have grown a lot in terms of creativity when mixing (which is something lost today) and Sven Väth helped me a lot in my beginnings in Ibiza musically, for example, Sven would give me his repeated promos on Mondays when he arrived at Amnesia. I can only speak so highly of those parties and I have possibly the best memories of those times. Starting the second month of his residency in Hï Ibiza’s Club Room, Paco Osuna’s NOW HERE continues to be a massive success, just as it was last summer. NOW HERE opened on June 13 and will continue every Tuesday through to October 3 at Hï’s Club Room, alongside The Martinez Brothers at The Theatre. With a really powerful line-up of more than 27 artists on a total of 16 nights, Paco Osuna’s NOW HERE has a very defined vision: to be a celebration of summer nights in which music is lived with passion and enjoyed collectively, to live the present moment to the fullest. As Ibiza is Paco’s headquarters for the summer, we had the opportunity to do an in-depth interview with him along with NOW HERE guest artists Melanie Ribbe, Blackchild, Iglesias and Manu Gonzalez, who have been part of the project since the beginning. PHOTOS: ALBERTO ALCOCER @ALBERTOALCOCER_
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