CARL COX: THE INTERVIEW

This summer, Carl Cox is reclaiming his place in Ibiza with his brand new residency at [UNVRS]. From the 22nd June - 21st September, the globally revered DJ has owned Sunday nights on the island, taking a fresh approach to his much-loved sets and setting a new benchmark for the island’s nightlife.

We sat down with Carl to talk about his career highlights, his musical journey, his relationship with Ibiza, and his 2025 Ibiza residency.

CARL COX: My first experience of electronic music goes back to the early ‘80s, when a lot of bands were experimenting with electronic music, with synthesizers and drum machines. A lot of the electronic music of today comes from then – Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, Cars, Herbie Hancock, Rockit. I was exposed to all this music that I loved because it was something futuristic. I wasn’t expecting to be inspired by it for so many years, even to this day. As a young guy growing up in that environment, most of the music made at the time was from bands. You’d have a guitarist, a drummer, a lead vocalist. And Kraftwerk had none of that. They literally just had four guys playing music from their computers. It was very early days, of course, but they were the blueprint of what we listen to today.

CC: The sound [in the early years] was quite confusing - early hip hop into Balearic beat, there were so many different elements. The one sound that came through it all was a kick drum, 4/4 beat. Once you had that, that was the catalyst for what we’re still enjoying now. I was right at the forefront of that movement.

CC: A lot of music in the early days was all dancefloor-orientated. An example of that for me is in 1987 Derrick May from Detroit created a record called “Strings of Life” and still today there’s nothing that sounds like that record. And when we got to hear that record, it just blew everyone away because it had no reasoning. There was no marketing strategy behind it. There was no, ‘if you make this record, you're going to be famous’. It was kind of done in innocence. But that was definitely the blueprint for what was to come. “Strings of Life” will always be revered as one of the all-time great electronic dance records. And I think that's when the penny dropped for where the scene was going, and what we were expecting from other people making that type of music.

CC: I didn't know how big it would be at all. Initially, with electronic music or dance music as a whole, there's always a scene around it. There was a disco scene, a hip-hop scene, and when electronic music came out it was almost like an experiment on how far we could take it. There was a shift between generations of people who were going to clubs that finished at two o'clock in the morning to then going to rave parties that lasted until sunrise. So the music had to change to carry you through that experience of going out, the excitement of it. People were making this music in Detroit, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, Italy, Germany, and Japan. As record buyers, we would go to all the different countries and bring these records together and share that music on the dancefloor. And that became the rave scene. It just grew and grew and grew. Did I know it was going to get as big as it was? Absolutely not. I gave the scene five years from 1988 and that’s it. Move on to something else. And 30-odd years later, we’re still here, innovating, and reinventing the wheel even more so now than ever before.

CC: So [in the early 90s] in the UK the House of Parliament put out a lobby against rave music. So, basically, if you were dancing more than four or five people around repetitive music you would be liable to end up in jail and do community service. They wanted to kind of cull the rave scene. So the bill was passed by the Houses of Parliament to do that and they gave the police carte blanche to enforce it on a countrywide scale.

But the thing was; the people revolted against it. They had so many different petitions and protest events that the Government had to admit that it was going to happen whether they liked it or not. And with that, the people had spoken. So it was a very, very big thing for young people to get the Government to understand that we need this in our lives. We don't want to be subjected to going home at two o'clock in the morning. We don't want to be subjected to not being able to dance with more than four people around us. We want to dance with a thousand people around us. So it was a really big thing that happened at which the government at the end of the day had to stand out and be counted.

And then years later I got asked to do a charity event at the Houses of Parliament to support this charity called A DJ Saved My Life Foundation, which was amazing actually. One of the funniest things that happened there was that when we were setting up the sound system, the politicians could hear the bass line and they were asking us if we could turn it down a little bit. The irony was very, very high. Some things never change. “We could hear a kick drum, can you get them to turn it down a little bit?” [Laughs].

CC: I was the only DJ to do two separate New Year's Eve events at the turn of the century. If you can imagine the build-up to all of it based on Y2K, the world's going to get reset to zero or the world's going to burn to a crisp and all sorts of conspiracy theories on what was going to happen as soon as the clock chimed 12.

In the UK, BBC Radio One decided that they wanted to have DJs from all over the world on the hour, every hour of which they would satellite link to DJs performing sets in South Africa, Italy or New Zealand, and have DJs dotted all around the world. But they wanted one DJ to be able to do the beginning of the millennium and the end 24 hours later. And the only way to do that was to do it in Sydney, Australia. And then 24 hours later, I ended up in Hawaii.

I played for three hours at the Pavilion down at Bondi Beach and it was an incredible, intense event. It was fantastic, and I will never forget it. Our flight was at 6.30 leaving from the airport. So we got our flight and Qantas put me on an old 747 or 737. Just so that if the plane did fall out of the sky because of Y2K, at least the pilots could take control and continue flying it. I thought, well, that's a bit of a vote of confidence in your ability for your planes to stay up in the air.

So eventually we landed in Hawaii at about 7.30 in the evening. And there were film crews there, news crews, and they're asking me, "What was it like?" You know, going back in time because when I left Sydney, Australia, my passport was in the year 2000. And when I got to Hawaii, it was still 1999. So I flew back in time. It was the most bizarre thing ever to land in a country which hasn't had its New Year's Eve party yet. So it was exciting again, going on, doing the whole introduction into the new year. Once I had done that, believe me, I had a really good drink after that. I had to keep it together throughout what was going on. Everyone around me was partying and going mad, but it wasn't over for me until I finished the second set.

CC: It was all based on my first experience going to the island in 1985. A lot of people at that time from the UK were going to Magaluf, but Ibiza was always the place which had the best clubs, the best sound systems, the best setups. So for me being a DJ who was very curious about the best sound systems, I kind of gravitated to the island.

When I first got there I was very young and I didn't have a lot of money. I stayed in San Antonio and I didn't play or DJ because nobody really knew who I was. A lot of the clubs were owned and run by Spanish people and the DJs were Spanish. So it was kind of nice to be able to go there and to enjoy their culture their way.

There was interest in having the UK promoters and DJs come over and take over certain places, say Café del Mar on a Tuesday. Nobody would go down there apart from the local Spanish people, but then if you put English promoters and DJs in there, a lot of the UK holidaymakers would gravitate to it. So I was there to see all of that kind of development as well. For me, the experience of Ibiza was like nothing else anywhere in the world.

So, you know when I go back to the island, when I start this new chapter at [UNVRS], it's all about owning that Sunday. It's the whole night, the journey, the ethos, the whole idea of why this club culture exists on the island, and what makes it so special for so many people. Music is the glue that keeps it all together. I've got a lot of catching up to do. I've got a lot of music that I want to share with people. Expect the unexpected always, and I just want people to walk away with having the best experience they can ever have in any club on that island.

CC: It's me. It's Carl Cox at [UNVRS]. There’s no fancy name. There's no marketing idea, we’re not selling tickets on a concept. It literally is a guy, me, and a brand new club on the island on Sundays. And if anyone knows me, they know that I always bring the party, whether I'm playing house music, hard techno, funk and soul, or drum and bass. I've always tried to play the best of all genres of music. I've always tried to give people my soul, my idea of what I believe should be played. And I've always supported DJs and given them a carte blanche on whatever they choose to play on the dancefloor. There should be no boundaries or limits to where we can go with this musically. I want people to walk away and to go, “I didn't expect that”. That's what I would like to leave as a legacy – giving people the unexpected. There are certain nights when you're able to get exactly what you want because you know what you're going for. But my night has always been based on vibe, energy and allowing the people to be themselves.

Catch Carl Cox at his landmark [UNVRS] residency every Sunday from 22 June - 21 September.