Balearic Breakfast | Episode 233 | Meeting Ken Fan & Family Gatherings (Kay McMahon)

Colleen 'Cosmo' Murphy broadcast the 233rd episode of Balearic Breakfast on her Mixcloud on July 29th 2025.

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About this episode. – After playing at the We are Love Festival, and while heading to the USA, Colleen streamed a pre-recorded episode of Balearic Breakfast, including an interview with DJ Ken Fan and a nice mix from our friend and Family Member Kay McMahon (thanks Kay for the pictures and the videos!).

Listen back to the 233rd episode of Balearic Breakfast:

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THE PLAYLIST

Ken Fan Mix

(2024) Tara Lily – Speak in The Dark

(2025) Saint Etienne – Alone Together (Cosmodelica Remix)

(2014) Germind – Pairing of Opposites

(2022) Guts Ft. Assan KIF – Nunca Pierdo

(2025) Brixton Underground – Don't Feel the Same

(2025) Blank Jones Marc_George – Lullaby Rediscovered

(2000) LTJ Bukem ft. Elliot Good – Sunrain

(2018) Dale Anderson, Anil Chawla – Leftorium (Ambient Mix)

(1999) Dido – Here With Me (Chillin with the Family Mix)

(NOL) DJ Day – VQ

(2023) Be.Lanuit ft. DJ Pippi, Melon Jimenez & Lara Wong – El Malagueño

(2025) Pig & Dan – Keep My Thoughts Behind

(2024) Ken Fan & Digby Jones – Starseed

Kay McMahon (Special Kay) Mix

(2012) Kindness – House

(2014) Depeche Mode – Useless (K&D Session Remix)

(2004) Atlantic Conveyor – Nasty Things

(2011) Late Nite Tuff Guy – I Don't Like Acid

(2024) Alex Kassian – E2-E4: A Reference to E2-E4 by Manuel Gottsching

(2001) Cadillac Jones – B'Nai Brown

(1978) The Doobie Brothers – What A Fool Believes

(1999) Mr. Scruff – Get a Move On

(2024) Joe Goddard – New World Flow (Ray Mang Remix)

(1994) T-Power vs MK Ultra – Horny Mutant Jazz

(2002) Prasie Cats ft Andrea Love – Shined on Me (E-Smoove Vocal Mix)

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KEN'S INTERVIEW WITH COLLEEN

[Colleen]

Good morning, Balearicans. I'm Colleen Cosmo Murphy, hosting your weekly Balearic Breakfast on my MixCloud Live until high noon. And greetings to all over there on the chat group. Thanks for joining me. Whilst I'm away, I have some special guest mixes for you on this week's program, starting off with an interview with and a mix from Café Del Mar resident and Ibiza resident Ken Fan. He gives us the lowdown on his musical background and what he's up to this summer on the White Isle. And that's followed by a mix from our Balearic Breakfast family member, Special K, K McMahon. So keep it locked. Good morning, Balearicans.

I'm here in the studio with Ken Fan, who is the resident DJ and the music manager over at the legendary Café Del Mar in Ibiza. And he also plays at a lot of other spots on the island, including Pikes. Hi, Ken.

How are you?

[Ken]

I'm super. Hello. Good morning. Yeah, full of energy. Happy. Couldn't be worse.

Beautiful island.

[Colleen]

Great job. Well, you are so busy. I was taking a look at your schedule and oh, my goodness. I mean, you are playing several times a day, sometimes nearly every day. How do you handle this schedule when the summer season starts at Ibiza?

[Ken]

Control, balance, lead not into temptation, just hydrate, don't drink alcohol in the daytimes, do things like stretch, yoga, just have a clean mindset. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

[Colleen]

Absolutely. Absolutely. I totally agree with you. And, you know, that's what you have to do when you're working really hard. I mean, the thing is, is our work is almost like play. I mean, we say we're playing music. We don't say I'm working music. You just say I'm playing tonight, not usually I'm working tonight. But it is it is it is work. And it's great work and very rewarding work. But it still is work. You do have to take care of yourself, especially with these temptations, as you said, all around you.

First, I just want to back up a little bit, rewind. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got into DJing and event management as well?

[Ken]

Wow. Okay, so I've been DJing for 34 years now. I started off interested in the hip hop scene, the old DMC type, mixing type stuff. Then I started going to raves, old raves and stuff. Then I was still at school at the time, I was like 14, 15 years old, doing school discos, the local clubs, then local radio shows, then a company called Miss Money Pennies, they picked me up. And they just brought me out to Ibiza every two weeks as a resident, out of, you know, then just escalated to Pasha, a funky room.

Yeah, it just escalated from that, really.

[Colleen]

Wow. I mean, as I read in your bio, you were going to Ibiza for 18 years before you moved there in 2009.

[Ken]

I've lived here full time for about 18 years. My first year here was 1998. Then I started playing here in 2000. But I moved here full time, yeah, 18 years ago.

[Colleen]

And what's it like living on the island? I mean, the summer, of course, you're a busy boy, I can see. But how is it like during the winter months when there's not as many people on the island? Do you like it a bit more?

[Ken]

Yeah, I do love it. I mean, especially through quarantine and all that sort of stuff. I mean, especially for the producers, it's our time of year where we can just switch off and concentrate, just like make beats, make music, especially collaborating with all the other island residents when we actually meet each other. I mean, in the summer, this is work for us. We just work our asses off. And yeah, even though we do enjoy our job, we're just working.

We don't actually get to see the island. We're just like, that sort of stuff. But yeah, the wintertime, we tend to make music, unless you're making music or you're going off touring or you just go on a vacation or something like that. I need to detox or I just need to get away, which sometimes I do as well. Well, most of the time.

[Colleen]

That's good. You need to do that. You need to take that kind of balance in your life. I'm trying to look for that myself. So if you have any tips, do let me know. Now, you do a lot of productions as well. You've done productions for Strictly Rhythm and things. Can you tell us a little bit about your productions and what you're working on? What we can expect in the near future from you?

[Ken]

I mean, with the house stuff, yeah, I don't really do that anymore. But obviously, these recent years, I've just been doing a lot of ballerics, a lot of chilled out stuff, which is picked up by Music for Dreams. I did a collaboration thing with George Salah. I know you've been playing him. Yeah, Music for Dreams, Disappear from Crisco Cove, New Northern Soul, Bit of Budapar.

[Colleen]

These are all great names and names that we featured on Balleric Breakfast. I know our listeners will love this and we'll be digging out your productions, which is great. Cafe Del Mar is such a legendary place. I mean, I worked at a record shop called Dash Track in the 90s and I bought the first compilation when it came in. I didn't really, I kind of even knew where Ibiza was, but barely. I was American, don't forget.

So in any case, the compilations were just amazing. I bought every single one as they came out on import and was really amazed by the musical selections. I would bring them to all my gigs because I was DJing six hours as a working DJ. What did it feel like when you were asked to work there? Because, you know, Jose Padilla's shoes are quite big shoes to fill.

[Ken]

Yeah, I didn't expect it really, to be honest. A Hong Kong guy from Birmingham filling his shoes. Cafe Del Mar 1998 was the first bar I went to. I bought the CDs and stuff and put the music on after the clubs and chill out, winding down and stuff. I was like, wow, the universe has presented this to me. And I find it's like everything happens for a reason sort of thing.

I think it's working a privilege at the time that went sour and then left there. Then I got off of this and I mean, I share the same. My birthday's on June 20th and the anniversary of Cafe Del Mar is also on June 20th. And there's a summer solstice day and I'm like a summer solstice, I'm a sunset DJ. So just everything's just like aligned and what happened. It's like I had no choice sort of thing. It's like automatically turned off or something like that. This is meant to be.

[Colleen]

That's great. And so, you know, since you're playing so much like every day, many hours, you have to go through a lot of music to curate your music and to get it all in order. And, you know, it's a lot of work behind the scenes DJing.

I mean, DJing isn't just showing up and playing records. It's all the other stuff's the work. When you're actually out there playing, you're playing, you know, but it's all the other stuff. How do you, how long does it take you to go through music? Are you going through music all year? Are you listening to new things every day?

[Ken]

Every day, yeah, every day. I allocate like at least a couple of hours a day for it, if I can, if I feel up to it sort of thing. But yeah, I try and allocate that. And yeah, yeah, yeah. It's part of my job. I have to do it, keep it fresh. And like finding, I know, hearing other DJs playing a track, an old track that I might not have, I go, oh, I need to download that, or something like that. Yeah, yeah. So I play like between probably like 10 hours a day sometimes and sometimes like more.

Yeah, I've got big playlists. Curating soundtracks is, for listeners, it's different to a club sort of thing. It's people, it's bums on seats, it's curating emotions and stuff like that. A club atmosphere when people, it's making people dance, it's a totally different thing. And yeah, building the atmosphere and the emotions for the sunset and people crying and stuff like that. It's this one thing we try to, yeah, curate for special moments.

[Colleen]

Are there certain songs that you really like to play during the actual sunset? I mean, the sunset in Ibiza is such a big thing. I remember being at El Toro once and it was like, wow, people are clapping and it's just really beautiful.

[Ken]

Yeah, it's mad. It's like, I don't know, if you're playing football and you're in the World Cup scoring a goal or something, you like a good sunset, you go, hey!

[Colleen]

Everyone's like...

[Ken]

It depends what we want to go for. An emotional one, want to get people crying or want to get that, yeah, cheer sort of thing. Or if it's a slightly cloudy and there's lots of colours, you can go for a lot like a mystical sort of thing, or you just go for a clean. So it's different criteria for different sunsets and different moods and stuff.

[Colleen]

Wow, I never thought of that. I mean, I had to curate, last year I played for the summer solstice here in the UK at the most eastern part of the UK. So the first place where the sun would rise at sunrise on a beach. And I really had to think this out. I mean, I really spent some time thinking of songs that had to do with the sun and the day beginning and having a good sense of energy and imbuing a positive spirit. Luckily, it was actually sunny and not cloudy, which is great here for the UK.

But I didn't really think about the whole sunset side in terms of the different types of emotions that it may bring, depending upon the quality of the sunset. That's really interesting.

[Ken]

Yeah, there's a technique sort of thing. You sort of like, for probably like about 20 minutes, four tracks before the actual sunset track, you sort of wind it down and get them into sort of like where you want them sort of thing. You sort of like capture them so like, so they're fixed on, fixed on the sunset sort of thing.

You're curating the lullaby, shall we say, then yeah, to bring out the emotion that you want. And yeah, there's technique to it.

[Colleen]

Yeah, there is. Absolutely. Well, this is all really wonderful. And I'm hoping that I get to hear you play at Cafe Del Mar sometime this summer, because, you know, I really would love to check that out. Before we go, do you have any tips for people that are visiting the island places that they may want to check out? I mean, I know you play at El Chiringuito and you play at Pikes and Cafe Del Mar, but even places like any good beaches or any good like off the beaten track fish restaurants that people should know about?

[Ken]

Those are new restaurants and stuff open. 528 Club, as I say, that's owned by Pikes. That looks like the most interesting as a club.I don't really go to nightclubs unless I'm working sort of thing to be honest these days. But that's probably the most interesting big thing for me. Obviously, there's that university that's open, but that's that sort of thing.

[Colleen]

Well, Ken, good luck with your crazy schedule this summer. I wish you all the best. I hope I can catch one of your sets when I'm over there this summer.

[Ken]

Talk you down, don't worry.

[Colleen]

Thank you so much for this wonderful mix. I really appreciate it.

[Ken]

Thank you.

[Colleen]

Thank you.

[Ken]

Take care.

[Colleen]

Bye, Bye!