An extraordinary picture…
It’s quite a strange scene when you drive back from Salinas beach on a late Monday afternoon in Ibiza. Located just 5 minutes outside of Playa d’en Bossa, right on the planes’ approach corridor of Ibiza airport, lies DC-10, Ibiza’s most notorious club of our generation. A rather ordinary Ibicenco countryside house, the club itself does not catch one’s eye from the outside. It’s the hordes of clubbers – many of them dressed up in fancy dresses – arriving by taxi or rental cars, all parked on a dusty field next to the club, that make you think „eh, what’s going on here…?“

Back in the days…
Up until about 2003 – 2004, DC-10 was an insider thing. Back then, people in the know went to DC-10 as an afterhours on Monday morning (and during daytime), to carry on after the 22 hour marathon party „We Love“ at Space. The party, called Circoloco, was a familiar get-together of night owls and DJs, locals and season workers. The atmosphere was very relaxed and there was hardly any promotion for their Monday session.

The big change for the club came with the explosion of minimal techno and tech house music and generally the big success of underground electronic dance music, around 2005. Suddenly, the plane model-named afterhours place got fashion and more and more „normal“ tourists, who normally wouldn’t do afterhours or don’t really connect to that style of music, got interested and checked it out. The impact was impressive, DC-10 was rewarded with a very special reputation, being the wildest and most hedonistic party of the island of the moment.

Changes
But with the success, also a lot of trouble arrived. Due to licensing problems and various other side stories, DC-10 was forced to shut down a few times, one year the club was closed for almost a full season. But ever the rebels, the heads behind the club, together with their lawyers, always found a way to open up again. And each time more and more clubbers came back, celebrating another reincarnation. Being shut and opening up again is part of DC-10’s story. Anyone who experienced both the doubting feeling whether the club would be open or not, and the redemptive „hallelujah“, when the place was in full action for another Monday, shares a great memory of that time in the history of this club.

Another change came in 2008, when the afterhour ban was put on our beloved island. Clubs in Ibiza now weren’t allowed to open before 16:30 and had to close at 07:00 latest. But again, the clubbers showed loyalty and kept supporting DC-10 just the same. Nowadays, boarding starts at 16:30 and the Circoloco plane takes off just when the sun sets behind the hills of the southern part of the island. Most of the people go to DC-10 until about midnight and then slowly start venturing off to other clubs for the rest of the night. On normal Mondays, the club shuts some time between 02:00 and 04:00.

Decediez hoy
Over the years, like all other clubs in Ibiza, also DC-10 had to do some refurbishments in order to comply with the law. For example, DC-10 used to be open air first, but for noise pollution reasons (strange if you consider it’s position right next the the runway of the airport), a roof had to be put on. Sure, one can say DC-10 is not the same place any more and he may have a point, but what’s kept in there is the feeling of clubbing in its rawest, purest form. The two dancefloors, the main room and the famous terrace, are both very simple and without any glam or décor at all. It’s the people that make the club shine. It’s the groundbreaking and simply fantastic underground electronic music thundering out of the sound system that reverberates out of the club and into the world.

Here, careers from underground heroes like Luciano, Loco Dice and Tania Vulcano were founded. DC-10 is a catapult for both great new music and great new artists. And the promoters behind the club and Circoloco are geniuses in finding new talent. Each Monday, you’ll find the crème de la crème of underground house music playing their latest tracks to the frantic crowd. Nowadays, DC-10 is normally open 3 nights a week, with two club nights (on Wednesdays and Fridays from midnight – 06:00) besides said Circoloco party. And, even though any night is a good night at DC-10, it’s still Circoloco on Mondays that makes people go crazy. So set your schedule for a visit at this wild, raw, funny and exciting institiution of good music in Ibiza.