As a cold south-westerly wind swept across Gibraltar, this week’s Balcony Beats braved the outside – but in a break from tradition, today’s picture was not taken on the balcony…
Balcony Beats #26 – 21 February 2021

As a cold south-westerly wind swept across Gibraltar, this week’s Balcony Beats braved the outside – but in a break from tradition, today’s picture was not taken on the balcony…
Set off for a single night to test out the campervan, as the restrictions between us and the nearest campsite are now lifted.
As the weather stayed wintery, this week’s Balcony Beats moved around to a slightly more sheltered part of the balcony. The music speaks of warmer climes and better times.
Back at home in Gibraltar, back under lockdown, back on the balcony… new year, same shit.
As we start 2021, we are being battered by storms and it is snowing on the mountains behind us – unbelievable for this part of the world.
This mix still sounds so fresh to me today, a proper mix of tough house, sexy yet dark vocals, pure acid, driving techno, and more.
A mix of the kind of driving, underground sounds that were interesting me at the turn of the century, far away from the dominant trance sound of the time.
While trance was the dominant sound in UK clubland at the end of the 1990s, and in the club I co-founded, “Tangled”, the tracks that I really loved were those that had the energy of trance music, but that also had a little more soul, something more subtle.
This mix contains ten of the biggest trance tracks of the seven or eight years previous, as played by Terry Pointon and myself in the main room of our club night, Tangled.
From around 1993 to 2005, I produced hundreds of mixtapes – first, they were literally tapes, then later, CDs. They were usually DJ sets representing what I was playing in the clubs and bars where I DJed in Manchester, England, often from the club night I co-founded, “Tangled”.