Thirty five years ago, Balearic was a descriptor that meant little more than a summery clutch of islands off the Mediterranean coast of Northern Spain. It was mainly the sort of place you went if you booked your holidays via a Thomas Cook brochure. One of the islands, Ibiza, had something of a reputation for being an island of refuge from those escaping persecution or the draft or, even, normal civilian life. It was where Freddy Mercury, notoriously, threw hedonistic parties and where Wham! famously filmed the video for ‘Club Tropicana’.
In 1987, Balearic began to take on a whole new meaning thanks to a group of British party-starters led by DJs like Trevor Fung and his buddies and girl duo Lisa Loud and Nancy Noise. They’d all become obsessed with the music of Argentinian refugee Alfredo Fiorito (DJ Alfredo) and the club where he was resident disc jockey, Amnesia. The Balearic Beat was born.
So what is the Balearic sound? It’s that most useful of phrases for a music journalist because, frankly, it can mean whatever you want it to mean. It can be a fuzzy and warm set of records that may (or may not) include Chris Rea, Simply Red or Wang Chung. Was it something that only existed in the record boxes of DJ Alfredo circa 1986 to 1988? And is it, as dance music veteran Frank Tope once described, “pop music that sounds good on pills” or a car boot sale of crap masquerading as dancefloor gold? Generations of portly, bearded DJs have been debating it for over 30 years.
With its winter sports, skiing fanaticism and ubiquitous saunas, is there a more unlikely region to conjure the spirit of hierbas, Latin rhythms, and sun-kissed beaches than Scandinavia? Well, actually, no. So here’s my top five from the land of moose and snus.
Listen along to the playlists via Spotify here, Apple music here and Tidal here.
Kassu Halonen – ‘Trans Sahara’
Completely unknown outside of Scandinavia, Kassu Halonen is an industry stalwart who is better known for his songwriting and production than he is as an artist. He was responsible for the best selling album of all time in Finland with Jari Sillinpää self-titled debut album (it sold 270,000 copies in Finland alone) in 1996. But back in the mists of time, Kassu was a solo artist and this one-off gem from his bottomless pit of songwriter credits, comes from the album of the same name, released in 1982. Honestly, it couldn’t scream “Balearic” more loudly …
