Martina Club - Ibiza

The Garbi Disco was a legend of the landscape on the Ibiza club scene; unparalleled cheese, europop eurosleaze and 14 year old girls having their first shandy with their dad by their side. Then the Garbi had a big refit in 2008 to overcome the power consumption problems and the Garbi Disco turned into Martina, a 1000 capacity club right in the heart of Playa d’en Bossa.

As a relatively new entrant to the Ibiza clubbing scene, Martina has had to pull out all the stops to get a slice of the attention so focused on stalwarts of the scene like, Pacha and Privilege. Cleary bankrolled by some kind of Russian oligarch type, the club announced itself in 2009 with the introduction of a Wednesday night called Five which left some people open mouthed when line ups including the likes of Audio Slave, Dave Clarke and DJ Hell were announced. Since then the club has gone from strength to strength and even the smaller nights with local DJs have being doing unpredictably well.

Martina is a very sexy club and as with many of the best Ibiza institutions, there’s always plenty of naked flesh on display – on the podiums and the dance floor. The main room of the club is as neon lit as the entrance with large screens, projects and several stages for getting up and showing off on. There’s also a VIP area behind the DJ booth with couches for getting down and dirty on or falling asleep in once you’ve overdone the champers.

Martina has an eclectic mix of nights, from the weekly Tuesday ‘erotic party’ of Hardcore De Luxe, to the Salsa sessions on a Saturday night. The music follows the Ibiza staples of a mix of house and techno. After small scale events last summer with local DJs and two-bit promoters, Martina have done what anyone in the dance music business should. That is, live or die, you have to at least try and give it a shot

The problem with any club trying to break the Disco Mafia is that you either need to do something totally different (Zoo Project with Gala Night, Garlands during their free party days) or you need to throw some cash at the thing, well, that's exactly what they've done, with one of the surprises of 2009 with their star studded line up for Wednesday event, called “Five”.