DJ Times: All over the musical map…
Jones: I’m somebody who gets quite bored very quickly, so I like to constantly make my sets from place to place as different as possible, and I want [Paradise] to reflect that. I love listening to rolling techno or the Berlin-style techno as much as I love listening to disco, so I think that’s what people can expect. We curate the night so that it all fits together, but I think that if you go in one room you can hear one thing and, if you go in the other room, you can hear another.
DJ Times: A well-rounded evening…
Jones: That’s what people can expect, along with… when I first went to Ibiza the nights I went to were pretty epic and there were lots of moments, and the lights were incredible. It wasn’t just a dark warehouse kind of feel—which I love! When I’m in Ibiza, I want to feel the Balearic-ness of where I am, and I think that’s what we’re trying to do: to bring underground music and DJs that we love on the cutting-edge of the scene and just soundtrack a Balearic night out.
DJ Times: A lot of its identity comes from its home, DC-10 in Ibiza. What makes that club so special and what’s your personal history with it?
Jones: My personal history with it was my third visit to Ibiza when I had decided to spend the summer there. I had been there [in 1998 and 1999] on holiday, and in 2000—the summer after my first year in college—I had decided to spend the full summer there. I went with my box of records, and midway through the season, some friends of mine from London were like, “You’ve got to come check out this party.” We’d heard something about it the week before. Back then, Space [Ibiza] on Sundays was the staple night where everybody went. It was amazing, the Space Terrace is open-air—I remember hearing Laurent Garnier and blowing my mind. It was an amazing night, and everyone would party there from about mid-afternoon until about 2 a.m., then we’d all hang out on the beach somewhere or actually at this weird hotel Manumission had. I don’t think anyone stayed there, and it was a place you’d have to be in-the-know to be invited, but they had all the performers of Manumission there. It all got kind of weird, but it was cool. We’d go there, and then about 8 or 9 in the morning, everyone would go to DC-10.
DJ Times: What about your first time there?
Jones: I went for the first time, and I think I remember I was inside for hours in this dark cave—it was the inside room of DC-10—and it had a foosball table in there, zero lights, super basic. It almost looked like a used club or something. I had been there for a good few hours, and I saw a light and thought, “What’s going on out there?” I didn’t even know there was a terrace out there. The whole club was maybe 300 people, the turntables were just on this makeshift DJ stand in the corner, and it was all open-air with barely any cover. The sun was blazing, and I remember sitting down on a piece of cardboard on the wall because I was, you know… partying hard [laughs]. Sitting down on the side of the dancefloor for God knows how many hours, just mesmerized by the music. It just became a thing.
DJ Times: Who was there?
Jones: Back then, it was predominantly Italians, Spanish, and some English/U.K. people, and we used to go every single week religiously. Every single week at 2 p.m., the police would come and shut it down because they didn’t have a license. Everyone would take a walk from DC-10 to Bora Bora, and we’d do that every single week. I watched it grow as the word spread, and two years later it was closing later and later until it went until 5 p.m. They finally got the license sorted, and that stopped happening.
DJ Times: And when did you start playing there?
Jones: I was on the dancefloor there every single week from 2000, and then in 2005, I had been playing in Ibiza, I had that residency at Manumission, and I got to know Clive Henry, who was a resident at Circoloco. I went from being on the dancefloor to finally getting asked to play a closing party there. Then I just did what a lot of DJs do: playing a closing to playing two or three nights in the summer, and then I played more and more for them. A few of the bigger DJs left—Luciano was their main guy and he went on to do his thing and Loco Dice was a main guy there and went off to do his thing—and then in 2008, the local authorities closed the club for the whole summer.
DJ Times: What was that like?
Jones: I know for me and a lot of people when it got closed, it was strange. I remember it being a Monday and waiting for the call to know it was happening. I was thinking if DC-10 wasn’t going to be open all summer, I was just going to go back to the U.K. You’ve got to remember back then there was only Circoloco and Cocoon that had guys playing underground house music that we loved. They ended up opening at the end of the season and did a night at Privilege, and I played. That next season they reopened and asked myself and Seth Troxler to be the main residents playing every week. There was a period of three years where we did that. We took over from Loco Dice and Luciano to be the main residents there. Then a few things happened to me with records and stuff and I got into the position where I could do my own night.
