the medicis of raving- how elrow becamece music empire | music … · 2018-12-04 · later that...

20/8/2018 The Medicis of raving: how Elrow became a dance music empire | Music | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/aug/17/the-medicis-of-raving-how-elrow-became-a-dance-music-empire 1/5

The Medicis of raving: how Elrow became a dancemusic empire

Sirin Kale

The Arnau family started with a single social club in 1870. Now, the Spanish dynasty turns over£18m a year with its hypercolour techno carnivals � by prizing spectacle over DJs

Fri 17 Aug 2018 11.57 BST

The Arnau family, which runs the super-successful Spanish party brand Elrow, has many Juans.Too many, some might say.

“This is Juan father,” screams Rosa, Elrow’s friendly PR, over a pumping tech-housesoundtrack. We are at the imposing villa in the Pedralbes suburb of Barcelona – known as theBeverly Hills of the city – that serves as the clubbing behemoth’s HQ. Around us, industryheads and Spanish reality TV stars celebrate the beginning of city-wide dance music festivalSonar. I drink margaritas and eat tiny chocolate mousses served to me by men in green suits.

How, I ask the Arnau patriarch, does he know which Juan is being addressed? After all, thereare six in the family. He clamps my shoulder. “Juan!” he says with an upward flourish. “Juan!”he goes on, with a slight inflection on the “an”. “Juan!” drawing out the “ua”. “You see?” I noduncomprehendingly, my shoulder numb. “Of course” – Juan father darkens – “then there arethe Juanitas.” He excuses himself to attend to his guests.



I am in Barcelona to meet the Arnaus as they prepare to launch an ambitious expansionstrategy that, if successful, will consolidate their position as one of the world’s most successfulclubbing brands.

Clubs and dance music promoters often struggle to make ends meet. Licensing restrictionssuch as those recently implemented by Hackney council in London are onerous. Gentrificationdrives up costs as promoters compete for the venues that remain. Health-conscious youngpeople go out and drink less than before. In fraught times for the clubbing industry, Elrow is arare success story.

It specialises in immersive, experiential clubbing. Parties are dramatically themed: enchantedforests; Brazilian jungle carnivals. Perhaps you will find yourself dancing under a metallicdolphin or beside huge, psychedelic butterflies. Actors in fancy dress circulate the venues,engaging the crowd. It is not for everyone, particularly if you are timid (giant confetti cannonsexplode without warning) or prefer your nightclubs dark and gloomy (imagine a Dr Seuss bookreimagined in fluorescents).

Since Juan Arnau Jr, the brand’s CEO, created Elrow as a Sunday party for his friends inBarcelona in 2010, the brand has enjoyed exuberant growth. It employs more than 100 peoplein its headquarters and will turn over more than €20m (£18m) this year. In 2018, Elrow willthrow 131 parties (or “shows”, as it calls them) around the world.

In part, this is made possible by the family itself. They are the Medicis of raving, with a dynastyspanning back to 1870. Six generations of Arnaus have worked in entertainment, from a 19th-century ancestor who opened Café Josepet, the first social club in Fraga, 95 miles west ofBarcelona, through to 50s-era music halls and 80s electro clubs. The family history is asfantastic and colourful as one of Elrow’s complicated set designs – the man who founded thefirst cafe also lost the family estate in the Monegros desert, west of Fraga, after betting it on agame of poker.

“The Arnau family have been doing this for a long time,” says Simon Denby, a talent bookerwho co-founded the dance music brand Percolate. “It can seem like their success has come outof nowhere, but they’ve got such a long history and a big understanding of how things workand why things are good and bad.”

An enormous, star-studded map of the world hangs on one wall of the colourfully decoratedconference room in Elrow’s HQ. Each star represents a 5,000-capacity Elrow show – and thereis a constellation’s worth of them.

‘It is not for everyone, particularly if you prefer your nightclubsdark and gloomy’ ... the Elrow party attended by Sirin Kale inBarcelona. Photograph: Toni Villen



“Europe is one of our biggest markets,” says Arnau Jr. “South America and the US are growthareas, especially Brazil, [Las] Vegas and Miami. We’re also moving into Australia and China.We’ll be doing 14 shows in China next year.” He gazes at his map with the dissatisfaction of aworld-conquering dictator. “I’m never happy. I want to take the brand to the next level.” Likethe kaleidoscopic octopuses you might see hanging above its packed dancefloors, Elrow’stentacles continue to spread. This weekend, it is holding a two-day festival at Queen ElizabethOlympic park in east London that will be attended by 55,000 people; further UK shows, inNewcastle and Southampton, are planned for later this year.

There have been missteps along the way – in 2016, Elrow apologised after fans were offendedby a poster caricaturing the Hindu deity Shiva as part of a Bollywood-themed party – but itspath to domination has been mostly untroubled. Dance music purists tend to be privatelydisparaging about the brand’s corporate culture and its music policy and snobbish about itsfans; the veteran DJ Carl Cox has described Elrow as “forced and staged”. But most people arewowed by its visual brio.

Although much of Elrow’s initial success can be attributed to the Arnau family’s expertise inthe clubbing industry and its deep coffers (“I said: ‘Dad, I need €15,000 for decorations,’”remembers Arnau Jr during an anecdote about the brand’s early months), any venture of thisscale requires major capital investment. In 2017, Elrow partnered with Superstruct, a liveentertainment platform backed by the private equity firm Providence, and its cash goes someway to explaining the young, hyper-competent Elrow employees I meet during my time inBarcelona. Elrow’s president, Vicenc Marti, explains that the business model emulates that ofCirque du Soleil, which transformed a tired and not-particularly-profitable industry – the circus– into a global business concern.

There is another reason Elrow is so profitable: in an industry where the DJ is king, it has shiftedpower away from highly paid record-spinning gods. “Elrow’s model is genius, because they’veeliminated the need to book ultra-expensive headliners in order to sell tickets by building up acult following around the party itself rather than its music,” explains an editor at a leadingdance music publication, who prefers to remain anonymous; such is Elrow’s power, marketingbudget and PR machine, few will go on record to speak about the brand.

“They sell out [the superclub] Amnesia in Ibiza consistently with smaller, less costly lineupsthan other superclubs on the island,” the editor says. “The concept itself is quite sexy for themedia – the photos always look phenomenal – plus the brand is a bit more easily digestible forperipheral dance music fans who don’t know much about house and techno, but still want toexperience big-budget club nights.”

‘They have been doing this for a long time’ ... members of theArnau family.



Later that week, I attend Elrow’s closing party at Sonar, in a semi-industrialised area a stone’sthrow from Barcelona airport. I thread my way through a maze of exuberantly themed rooms.Girls in buns and Moschino bikinis take selfies and dance under an enormous papier-machedinosaur head suspended from a rainbow-striped ceiling – perfect Instagram fodder. In anotherroom, a Loch Ness monster presides, incomprehensibly, over the dancefloor. The Danish DJKolsch plays his track Grey while stilt-walkers and men in foam outfits, dressed to look likedancing bottles of Desperados lager, circulate the tiki-themed main stage. Transfixed, I barelynotice when an enormous confetti cannon goes off; I look down to see that my drink is full ofbrightly coloured paper.

Rather than being seasoned clubbers, the fans I interview all view Elrow parties as a specialone-off. “I prefer Elrow over clubs, because their decorations are always over the top andunique,” says 21-year-old Reagan Bowling. “It’s about €50 for a ticket, which is expensive, but Ifeel like it’s worth it, because it’s similar to events in Ibiza that are about the same price.”

“For the experience, I think it’s worth the money,” agrees 26-year-old Simon White, clad in afunky shirt and denim shorts, with an inflatable Elrow-branded rubber ring around his neck. “Irarely go to clubs unless there’s a DJ I’d like to see.”

Elrow has subverted traditional clubbing models in part because those have become pale andstale. Search the listings for almost any major city and you will see competing, identikitofferings, often with the same roster of endlessly touring techno and house DJs. By contrast,Elrow offers a saturated burst of immersive entertainment that translates well on social mediafor a crowd that is less engaged in dance music. It scratches the same itch that makes adultspay to play in big ball pits or throw paint at each other in loose approximations of the HinduHoli festival. “People aren’t that interested in headliners any more,” says Denby. “People wouldrather spend more money going to that one really special event every few months withamazing production.”

There is a stereotype about people from Aragon, the oft-overlooked area of north-eastern Spainfrom where the Arnau family hail: they are stubborn, mutinous even, in the pursuit of theirgoals, like the horses that roam the uppermost edge of the region, where the landscape morphsinto the Pyrenees.

“One thing I learned from my grandfather and father was that you always party with thecustomers,” Arnau Jr told me earlier in the week. “My sister and I would always be the onesdancing with the crowd. That’s when I realised that people were completely saturated. Back inthe day, people were willing to pay to see an amazing DJ like Carl Cox, but now they’re not

‘People would rather spend more money going to that one reallyspecial event every few months with amazing production.’Photograph: Maxime Byttebier



willing to spend that money, because you can see them every week. So, we have to deliversomething else – something special.”

Only someone with a stallion-like disposition could turn that insight into a multimillion-eurobrand – someone Aragonese, perhaps. And it is making people feel special – and grabbing themby the eyes rather than the ears – that has made the Juans number one.

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TopicsClubbingDance musicSpainMusic industryfeatures

the medicis of raving- how elrow becamece music empire | music … · 2018-12-04 · later that...

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