Pulling Stunts With Baleariq
Baleariq wears glasses by Bulgari; hat by New Era; blazer by Saint Laurent; T-shirt by House of the Gods; tie by Brooksfield; trousers by Loro Piana; bag by Prada; ring and loafers are stylist’s own. Photo by Theo Choquart.
You were introduced to me as Tristan from Ibiza who likes to party when we first started studying together. That must have been 3-4 years ago now, how long have you been Tristan from Ibiza who likes to party?
Not very long, actually. I’ve been “Tristan from Ibiza” for a good 20-something years, but I only started making music and putting on parties relatively recently. I never really went clubbing as a kid and the first time I made any kind of music was about five years ago. The Baleariq name and persona are even more recent than that, they’re the result of an inside joke that spiralled and stuck a few summers ago.
The turning point for me was going to see tINI b2b Shonky in the main room at DC10. Until then I had a bit of an aversion to dance music and the prospect of going out made me quite uncomfortable, but some childhood friends convinced me to go anyway, and I came out a different man - I just had such a good time on the dancefloor.
You're involved in a lot of things which many would consider to be at odds – you DJ, you just finished an economics degree, you’re back in uni studying maths…
I try not to filter my curiosity to fit any sort of legible criteria; the only resources available to us are attention and time, and I aim to spend both on the people and things that pique my curiosity. I know what I care about at any given time and want to pursue those things for their own sake, relentlessly.
That being said, none of those projects are at odds with each other in my mind. They may be positioned that way in the world, but I think that's because they tend to get caricatured a bit reductively. The most striking example to me is maths; contrary to popular belief, it’s not a soulless technical slog, it’s a highly creative pursuit that’s quite concerned with beauty, among other things.
I also think there’s something to be said for resisting the specialising drive that pushes people into pigeonholes as they get older. Otherwise, you start to believe that you really are who you happen to be right now, and you're not. You could be anyone and do anything.
I see all of this as trying to pull off a big stunt. The cadence of work required to make progress in all these fields is definitely not a stunt or a one-off, but leaving the planet with the facts of my life arranged in a pattern which somehow resembles my aspirations is the stunt.
If I can make all these seemingly disparate things work together, navigating through the tough sections with relative grace, that would be a pretty sweet stunt.
It's the fantasy. You're Hannah Montana.
Yeah, I'm Hannah Montana.
Spoiler, Hannah comes to a crisis towards the end – she’s forced to choose.
Damn, I didn’t know that - I'm not too well versed in the lore.
That’s totally possible, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. I have a very strong belief that I can do it. Maybe not, but I’m going to try. We'll see how it shakes out.
I try to focus on process rather than outcomes anyway. Outcomes are stochastic and ephemeral, process is the only place where you can exercise agency and it’s the substance of your daily experience. The outcomes could be great, but they’re mirages relative to the fact that I can have a life full of people, places, ideas, and things that I love engaging with today.
Left: Baleariq wears rosary necklace by Jade Jagger; belt by Antonio Ben Chimol OO; boots by Rick Owens, shorts are stylist’s own. Right: Baleariq wears rosary necklace by Jade Jagger; jacket by Gucci, T-shirt by Supreme, trousers by The North Face; boots by Rick Owens, ring is stylist’s own. Photo by Theo Choquart.
I think one of the most interesting things about you is that even though you’re quite pained by some of your projects, you have no qualms about playing around in public.
My projects are very important to me, so it hurts when things don’t go well, but there are good reasons for it to hurt and bad reasons for it to hurt and I do my best to squash the bad reasons. I often joke about being an insecure, pretentious poser for many reasons (apart from it being true).
Trying to do anything that makes you stand out is risky on a few levels, but most of the potential losses are denominated in highly fictional and very volatile currencies. Playing with the attachment I have to those things is a way to desensitise myself so that I can focus on the fulfilling parts of the work.
If something is worth doing for the right reasons, I think you should be willing to risk as much embarrassment as is necessary to achieve it. This stuff is important to me, but it's not serious. Serious stuff involves serious risks like dying, not looking stupid. We can be a little more playful here.
Photo @baleariq
What does it feel like to DJ? I have no idea, I’m usually on the receiving end.
The feeling I’m shooting for is total liberation, for everyone involved. I spend the vast majority of my time prisoner to the machinations of my mind and getting my ass beat by the narratives tumbling around inside my skull. It sucks, and it’s possible to completely escape it on the dancefloor - that's what captivates me about dance music.
Total liberation may be starkly different from what most parties are for most people on most nights, but that’s what I’m going for. The dream is to take a relatively normal room and turn it into an alternate universe utopia where you sweat through your shirt and dance holes into your shoes.
It sounds corny or whatever but when everything aligns, all the restrictions melt away and you are one with the music and everyone else – it doesn’t get any better than that.
Do you feel pressure to do something novel? A lot of artists do but I feel like DJs get a free pass to reference the past as much as they want.
Firstly, I am an infant in terms of experience behind the decks and know nothing compared to many people I look up to, so don't take me too seriously.
Novelty is a very tricky thing to chase or claim, but I do think surprise is key. Pretty much all of the fundamental tropes and techniques of dance music have been well established for many decades. They’re great and work extremely well, but they also lend themselves to formulaic approaches that have been seen and heard a million times, so I think trying to surprise people is important.
In my opinion, there are a few colours that people don't paint with as much as they could. For example, humour is not typically associated with music, especially club music, but I think making a crowd crack up at the right moment sounds great. Frank Zappa has a lot of great music that also happens to be hilarious. I think that's an under-explored possibility for club music.
Photo by Theo Choquart.
There’s definitely a humour throughline in your style as well, which I love.
Thanks! When I lean into it, a big part of the aesthetic is just that I deeply enjoy absurdity. Once again, I think it's fun to pull a stunt and be wild with it and see what happens.
A lot of it leans quite camp because I find it fun to wear things that are very exaggerated and somewhat inappropriate, I get a kick out of it, and I think going off with the clothing requires a good dose of femininity too.
Another big part of it is inherited, both figuratively and literally. I get a lot of my clothes from my grandad, and I’ve borrowed many a necklace from my mum. My grandad’s a very sharply dressed fella and a big proponent of wearing nice clothes sloppily, which I also tend to do.
There's also a cultural element to it, I like to reference all the weird styles I saw around me growing up in Ibiza, whether it’s the droves of white-linen-clad seekers, the pack of shirtless Israeli dads rocking gold jewellery and camo shorts to fix a generator in the woods, or the Nike cap, fanny pack demons of San Antonio.
Baleariq wears rosary necklace by Jade Jagger; shirt by Y-Project x Jean-Paul Gaultier; belt by Antonio Ben Chimol OO; boots by Rick Owens; shorts and ring are stylist’s own. Photo by Theo Choquart