Marching On: Syreeta & Andrea Oliva celebrate a decade of ANTS in Ibiza

S: “I love that. I feel like that’s what’s happening with me right now. You’ve got Andrea and ANTS that are believing in me, and they’re helping me push and grow on the island as well. Growing as an artist with a party like ANTS, it’s just the best.”

A: “Yeah, also I think sometimes you have to make choices, and you don’t have to take the easy way. I could have stayed with Luciano and played with him, but I had the chance to experience so much more. Everybody told me back then, ‘You’re crazy, Andrea, you’re making a mistake’. And I was like, ‘No man, Ibiza is all about day parties’. Like, Ushuaïa is a day club. I saw all of Yann’s ideas and the stage and the production and so many things, and he really made me feel like a big part of it. Sometimes you just have to believe in something, and also represent it.”

Did you ever think, after the first season, that we’d be sat here talking about 10 years of ANTS?

A: “Obviously ANTS is taking place on a Saturday. Back then, no one wanted to play on the island on a Saturday, because DJs made their money outside of Ibiza on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Ibiza was good for every DJ to play Monday and midweek, because here, midweek on the island is like weekends elsewhere. Therefore, we had an easy path because no one did this kind of music on a Saturday. This is one thing which really helped, as did the diversity of the line-up.

“You come to an ANTS party and you’re not going to hear the same tech-house sound for 10 hours. You have people who play more melodic sets, people who play more epic, people who play more dub, more housey, more big room, it’s very diverse. This is why I think we knew from the start that if this is going into the direction it’s taking, it’s going to be here for a long time. Because 10 years on the island, which is a competitive island, is hard.”