genre dance

When one steps outside the airport in Ibiza, they see a long row of billboards promoting many of the club nights on the Spanish island, a longtime destination for dance music fans. Many visitors have noticed the simple but striking fact that all of these billboards feature the names and faces of exclusively male artists.
“Is it equal opportunity? It’s definitely not. There’s something going on there. It’s still controlled by a bunch of, I guess, old school bookers and club owners.” So says Aloki Batra, the CEO of hospitality and real estate group FIVE, which acquired Pacha Ibiza in 2023. Hoping to innovate on the island while also maintaining and extending Pacha’s historic status, he was determined to do something different.

And so for the 2025 season, and for the first time in the history of Pacha — which opened its doors in 1973 — the club will have a female resident, with longstanding house producer Blond:ish launching an 11-week residency on May 21. Called “Abracadabra” (the name of the event series she’s hosted around the world for years) the party will focus on music, merriment and magic.

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“We literally have things levitating in the air,” says the producer born Vivie-ann Bakos. “We’re building this hologram [installation] and just doing epic stuff where it feels like magic.” Bakos cites plans to install “press for champagne” buttons on the dancefloor, allowing clubbers to simply press a button to have a glass of champagne delivered to them, putting trained magicians and illusionists on the dancefloor, pulling people out of line and gifting them with VIP status for the night and other special flourishes and “random acts of kindness” and whimsy to make the nights inviting, interesting and meaningful.

“A residency is a place where you can create and iterate on a consistent basis, and you learn from the previous weeks,” says Bakos. “We don’t just have one chance; you have people coming to see you every week, and you learn from the people a week before, so by the middle of the residency it’s this crazy snowball effect of what we want to do. And the reason we do this party goes back to helping people live their best life. Without speaking about it, we show people through the music how to create their own magic.”

In terms of the distinction of being Pacha’s first female resident, Bakos says being the first female anything has never been a focus of her career, which began more than 15 years ago and has included major festival plays, global club shows, an official remix of Taylor Swift’s “Fortnight,” a collaboration with Madonna and a focus on environmentalism through her Bye Bye Plastic initiative, which works to reduce the use of single use plastic within the industry.

During it all, she’s been more focused on meeting her goals with the music itself. Bakos does say, however, making history as Pacha’s first female resident “I think it maybe means a lot for the music industry as a whole, because I think a lot of people are triggered when you’re outside at the Ibiza airport and you see all the billboards.” (Her face will appear on billboards on other parts of the island, as most of the billboards near the airport are owned by the Ibiza clubs Hï and Ushuaïa.)

Batra says that while “a lot of names were getting thrown around” for potential residents, Bakos proved that she has what it takes after a playing a series of nights at Pacha last summer. Here, Batra found that “the music on point, the energy was really infectious and she has a way of resonating with the dancefloor that I thought was special.”

Bakos, her wife and their new baby will live on the island this summer during the residency. Before that, however, she’ll release her debut album, Never Walk Alone on February 14 via Insomniac Records. The 11-track project is full of bright, bouyant house music that reflects Bakos’ current mindset and mission.

“I used to make darker music, because I was living in after hours,” she says. “But my music is definitely not dark these days. You can feel that, and it’s because every decision I make with my music is about answering the question ‘How can I help people live their best lives?’”

Determining this mission is a function of Bakos’ own personal and professional evolution. In the earlier years, she says, “I was just traveling the world trying to play for the biggest crowds ever.” As time went on, however, “I started actually figuring out what my why is, and why I exist in the world and the music industry and why I’m a DJ.”

This contemplation led her to determine that “I want to help people live their best life, and I’m doing that through my music. That’s my connection point with every single person in this world, without having a conversation.” Bakos made this goal part of the conversation with her album collaborators, taking time to talk about the intention for tracks while making them alongside artists including British singer Stevie Appleton, L.A.-based, Zimbabwe-born singer, rapper and producer Bantu and more.

Bakos is releasing the vinyl editions of Never Walk Alone on bio-based PVC, a material that’s 99.9% petroleum-free, cuts 90% of the carbon dioxide emissions from the process and creates no difference in the sound quality between bio-vinyl and regular vinyl. With the eradication of single use plastic a longtime part of her mission, Bakos knew she had to make a plastic-free vinyl, although at first “I didn’t know it was possible. It was just a dream.” Figuring out that it could actually happen, she says, further demonstrated to her “that magic does exist.”

She hopes this vinyl will also show other artists that it can be done, the same way Bye Bye Plastic has shown that there are alternatives to venues using loads of single use cups and bottles. Partnering with Pacha has easy, she says, as they’re already “quite sustainable.” (The club operated exclusively on renewable electricity for the 2024-2025 season and is focused on bringing down water consumption at the venue at the nearby Ibiza resort, DestinoFIVE, which is set to reopen as a five-star resort this season after a significant remodeling. It’s also pursuing LEED Gold or higher certification across its properties in Ibiza and Dubai.) Bakos hopes their extra efforts this season will, in the competitive Ibiza market, make “the other clubs get FOMO” and follow suit with similar environment-focused projects.

Working with Pacha and Batra on making Abracadabra special has been especially refreshing, Bakos says, because “He’s a ‘yes’ guy. He’s very supportive. It’s amazing to work with him, because he’s not from the music industry, so he comes with a different outlook, whereas the traditional music industry is very set in their ways on how to do things old school. I love that he comes with a different mindset that’s very possibilist, versus limiting.”