Francisco Allendes chats to James Heavyfeet about Ants at Ushuaia, his top three tips for Ibiza and the best spots to check out.
Fransico Allendes
Francisco Allendes, Chilean DJ and producer now residing in Ibiza, is one of the hottest talents of the contemporary dance music scene. Active since early last decade, Allendes has grown over the years releasing music for some of the most prestigious labels in the techno / house scene such as Desolat, VIVa Music, Cadenza, Mood and Spectral Sound. The Fiebre Amarilla World Tour 2009 consecrated him on the world DJ platform and ever since, he has been omnipresent in clubs and at festivals on the world circuit including the Mysteryland Festival in Chile, Love Parade Chile and Love Parade Berlin, Creamfields, WMC and shows and parties as relevant Hyte, Cocoon Ibiza, Destino, Space, Privilege and Ants (Ushuaïa). His sound as a producer shifts between the synthetic house and techno grooves, always displaying flashes of organic rhythms and percussion. Allendes has produced several hits of the tech / house scene the most recognisable being Esa Nena Quiere, El Ladrón de Mails and Espíritu; and his production has been widely received and supported by some of the most influential DJs of our time i.e. Luciano, Ricardo Villalobos, Reboot, Josh Wink and Loco Dice.
Read more about Fransisco on his[su_permalink id=”http://www.artistalife.com/artist/francisco-allendes/”]biography[/su_permalink] and listen to his interview with Unity Radio below:
James Heavyfeet: So first off for the listeners who maybe haven’t come across you before, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you’re from, how long you’ve been djiing and making music and what kind of stuff you play and produce?
Francisco Allendes: I’m from Chile. I was born in a city in the north and Iived there for twenty-eight years. I started playing records when I was twenty-one, parties, getting bigger. I started making music – I played violin when I was a kid so this helped me a lot to understand theory, harmony and then when I started playing records it was very natural. After a few years, age twenty-three,twenty-four, I started making records. When I was twenty-eight I hit my first release. Because of this track I was called to work in Ibiza. And I did my first summer here in 2009 being resident of Ushuaia. Since then I’ve been here, I didn’t leave !
JH: Wicked, so this summer Unity Radio heads to Ibiza to celebrate it’s fifth birthday in association with Duck and Cover. We’re gonna be there from the third to the seventh of September. We’re gonna be appearing at Redlight at Sankeys, hosting El Salon for Carl Cox’s ‘Music is Revolution’ and playing Ushuaia for Ants.
Francisco: Oh great!
JH: So I’m particularly interested in chatting to you about Ants, you’ve got a few dates there this summer right?
Francisco: I have six dates. I’ve already done three and have three more to come.
JH: The gigs you’ve done already – how did they go? How is the 2016 season looking?
Francisco: I don’t know particularly about other parties but Ants I’m going almost every Saturday and its rocking. The music is amazing; the club gets packed very early. I dunno, there’s this special feeling about open-air parties that you can’t beat with night-clubs. Ants has this. It’s open-air. At first there’s the little stage where everyone’s really close to the dj. And then 9pm, when it’s packed, packed, packed, they move onto the main stage. I really love this party; I think it’s one of the highlights of the island.
JH: Wicked. What’s the crowd like? Does it differ from any of the other parties?
Francisco: Well it is different because all the other days in Ushuaia are more commercial stuff. EDM, they have Nervo, they have David Guetta, Steve Aoki. Of course you have Saturdays with Andrea Oliva or Nic Fanciulli, Apollonia. A different crowd, totally different. The best crowd is the week!
JH: There we go. High praise indeed. When you are there, playing for Ants. What’s the general vibe with the music? What sort of style are you playing, what sort of music are the guests playing?
Francisco: It depends on the time that you play, because if you play in The Garden, you need to play more sunny, more sunshine stuff. But if you get to play the main stage you can really rock on, rave-style. Normally you’re gonna hear tech-house, you can play more melodic or groovier. There’s not really a restriction. I didn’t hear yet any techno in the daytime…! There’s very, very nice house and tech-house going.
JH: Wonderful. And you’re playing the closing party in September, as well right?
Francisco: The openings and the closing.
JH: How do the closing parties differ from the main height of the season? What’s the vibe like for those?
F: I do feel like people are extra, extra excited because it’s time to leave the island…and come back to normal life! So people are like trying to destroy every energy they have left inside. You can expect people going like double crazy. Of course the club gets crowded right away, even when they open the doors, it gets crowded in like one hour. You can expect a full-on party.
JH: In a couple of weeks you’re playing for HYTE in Croatia. What do you think that’s gonna be like?
F: Well, I’ve been playing for HYTE for a couple of years now. In Chile, in Ibiza and also because I’m very close with Loco Dice and he’s always supported me. So normally playing for HYTE is very good, also there’s great parties and great line-ups. The music is more German-style? I’m sure it’s gonna be great.
JH: So you mentioned Desolat, Loco Dice releasing music on those labels, and Cadenza as well, how did these releases come around? And what else have you got coming up?
Francisco: My first big label to work with was Cadenza. I did work with other labels like from Chile, making music from my house, sending emails via Myspace!
JH: Old school!
Francisco: Yeah! On Myspace you could reach some smaller labels. But once, you know Luciano, he’s from Chile also, some friends of mine knew him and I was invited to a barbeque and he was there. I gave him a vinyl of my record label and he was like “Oh cool you have a record label in Chile – let me support it, I’m gonna give you a remix. Then I sent him some tracks that were supposed to be released on my label with his remix, but he listened to them and said “You know what I would like to release them with Cadenza, if you don’t mind.” And I said of course I don’t mind! That was my first contact with his label. And then this particular track, Llovizna, brought me to Ibiza. Because he played it and it was like one of his hits for the year and from this I got a call from Ushuaia to ask me to be resident. And then in Ushuaia I met Loco Dice. I met a lot of people: Sven [Vath], Marco Carola and all the guys that were playing there. I started sending music to Loco Dice. And one track I wasn’t expecting him to even like, he loved.
JH: Awesome.
Francisco: Yes it’s been like this. Meeting the people, then sending the music…and maybe also a bit of luck. Let’s say it.
JH: Definitely. And you have got any releases coming up over the summer?
Francisco: I have in the next month a remix for an English label called Underground Audio. Then I have my next definite release, it’s gonna be a seven-tracker and I’m very excited about this. It’s been a whole year working for it and I’m very happy with it. And I also have a track on a Desolat compilation to come also, somewhere later this year , but they’re not sure about it yet when’s gonna be the date. So for releases that’s it. I’m working on a lot of music. I’m working in the studio every day. So every week or every two weeks I have a new track. But I’m not releasing anything yet, I’m waiting to have a bunch of tracks.
JH: Now I just wanna return to Ibiza for a couple of questions because you have the perfect location, you live out there, to explain to our listeners, better than most people ,what it’s actually like. So if people may be going out there for the first time, how would you describe Ibiza to them?
Francisco: Well Ibiza, is a beautiful island in part of the Balearic Islands. You come here, if you’re a party-guy, you have some of the best clubs around but you will have a problem to find a cab, also you will find very expensive apartments! But it’s a great place in fact the first time I came here; I fell in love right away with it. Because you have a mix of this very intense night-life and day-life of music, music-life let’s say. Combined with nature. The island is basically nature. It’s not a city. You have little towns and the rest is all nature, beaches, countryside, animals and all roads.
JH: Do you have a little place to hideaway and get away to? Anywhere secret?
Francisco: Well my house is very secret, between the mountains. We have nobody around us and I really like to spend my time here. But for example if I wanna go to the beach, I like to go to Sa Punta .In Sa Punta at the very end of Talamanca, is a little place of only rocks and nice beach also. Then another secret also is Es Vedra. It’s amazing. It’s an island, like a rock that comes out of the sea in San Jose. Not many will know but you can go there and have an amazing sunset and very good paella and you can stay all day! If you wanna climb, you can climb; you can climb the rocks or you can go walking down, to a place called Atlantis and it has this circle of stones and weird, very old walls that no one knows where they come from. Some people live there, like hippies, it’s very crazy.
JH: There you go some great recommendations for some alternative places to check out in Ibiza.
Francisco: If you’re here you can go to, at least, fifty or sixty beaches. Some are very big, some are very little. Some you cannot reach by car, you have to walk, but then this is more difficult to explain – I’ll have to take you there!
JH: Excellent, I’m giving you a call when we get to Ibiza then. If you had three tips for our listeners, three things that they had to do or bear in mind when in Ibiza, what would they be?
Francisco: There is a great café restaurant hidden around San Miguel called La Paloma . You can sit in a garden surrounded by trees and animals; you can go for breakfast or nice lunch. I totally recommend this.
JH: I have written it down. I’m going. And where else?
Francisco: I’ve told you already: Es Vedra. To watch the sunset. You take a car, a bus or a bike, to go to Cala d’Hort. It’s this beach where you see Es Vedra, from the beach. But a couple of beaches before arriving on the beach, you take like a hidden road, at the side of big garbage cans and you can go on a cliff to watch Es Vedra. Have you been there? You know this?
JH: I’ve not. I know of Es Vedra, but I’ve not actually been.
Francisco: Go there, and you go in the day –not in the dark cos you’re gonna get lost. But if you’re there in the day you can walk down this cliff and get to the sea. This is very nice to do.
And of course in Sa Punta: The Fish Shack. Go to the end of Talamanca, you’ll see the road finish, there is a restaurant. Behind the restaurant, there is some rocks, you walk on the rocks, maybe two hundred meters. And there is a shack, where you can buy fish every day that they get fresh, on the day of course. And it’s very cool, nobody really knows it, there’s no signs, you just have to get there.
JH: I tell you what Francisco it’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you. You’ve given us some real gems of things to explore and deliver in Ibiza. I hope some of our listeners listen and go find something a little different on the island. I hope you have a fantastic summer! I hope Ibiza goes well, Croatia goes well, and all your releases go well. And I hope you have a fantastic 2016.
Francisco: Great,thankyou very much. It’s been a pleasure talking to you. When you come here, hit me up!
JH: If some of the listeners want to know a bit more about you where should they head?
Francisco: You can track me on any social media: Facebook, Instagram, Soundcloud , Twitter and also now, Snapchat. Just put my name and you will find, Francisco Allendes. Of course Beatport, if you want music, plus Mixcloud, I’m about to start my radio show on there.
