Some people build nightclubs. Others spend a lifetime trying to understand what makes them unforgettable. Aaron Mellor, through his company Tokyo Industries, has spent more than three decades doing both. From Manchester’s legendary Haçienda to Ibiza’s newest listening club, his goal is create something extraordinary. His latest project, Nocturna, is built on a simple belief: when music is heard the way it was meant to be heard, it has the power to bring people together.
Threaded through Aaron Mellor’s reflections is one recurring belief. Beyond the stories of Manchester, LA, New York, Ibiza and decades spent in nightlife lies a simple idea: music has the power to bring people together in a way that feels genuine. Not through bigger productions or brighter lights, but through shared moments, extraordinary sound and a sense of community. Long before he became the creative force behind some of Ibiza’s most ambitious concepts, Mellor was growing up in Manchester during one of the most influential periods in British music history. “It was a really crucial point in time. In the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, ‘Madchester’ was the music capital of everywhere.”
Before algorithms decided what people listened to, music travelled around the world in waves. One moment the spotlight belonged to Manchester, then Seattle with Nirvana and grunge, then New York with The Strokes, before returning to Britain with Britpop, Oasis and Blur. “It’s interesting that music doesn’t move in geographic waves anymore.”
For Mellor, it wasn’t only the music that left its mark. His first club experience came at Butterfly’s in the North Manchester town of Oldham when he was just 17. “It blew my mind. It was like a theme park for music, alcohol and girls. Nothing, like, cool and very commercial but the interaction was incredible”. Soon afterwards he became a regular at the legendary Haçienda. Drawn there by his love of the band New Order and their label Factory Records, he discovered something that would shape the direction of his life.
“I was hooked. Not just by the club, but by the fashion, the architecture, the design, the social impact, Tony Wilson’s Factory Records, the graphic style, the chaos and above all its ‘art-over-business’ approach. It changed everything for me. I was obsessed.” That combination of music, creativity, architecture and design became the foundation of everything that followed.
Originally trained as a project manager in high-rise construction, Mellor returned to university during the recession of the early 1990s to study architecture. Running out of money, he persuaded someone to let him DJ. “I’d never done it before. I had a good record collection and thought, ‘How hard can it be?’” The answer proved more complicated than expected, but the experience revealed something much bigger.
“I realised that if you were both the DJ and the promoter, you could control the whole night end to end – from the graphic design on the flyers, to the brand, to the music, the projections and the image through the dance floor.”It was never simply about playing records. It was about creating an experience, and building community. Mellor calls it “social architecture”– the way people move around spaces, the layering of experiences and the anticipation of expectation. Designing a nightclub, he realised, wasn’t so different from designing a building, but upon different levels. Both shape the way people experience a place and the emotions it evokes.
If Manchester shaped his creative DNA, Ibiza captured his imagination. His first visit to the island in the mid 1990s remains unforgettable. “I got off the packed Discobus and walked down the dark road to Ku Club. I thought I’d arrived at the club, then realised I was standing on a balcony overlooking this gigantic space. Manumission was disorganised chaos on a spectacular level.”
Those nights left a lasting impression, but so did the island itself. “You mixed the utter chaos with the incredible tranquillity of Ibiza – the beaches, Es Vedrà, the mountains and the sunshine. We don’t get much sunshine in Manchester.” Like so many before him, he never really left. “There is nowhere else in the world like it.”
Yet Mellor speaks candidly about the realities of building a business on Ibiza.“I always wanted Ibiza to be an escape because business here is hard. Near impossible, to be honest. This island is not the place to run a business. Everything is 20 times harder than anywhere else in the world.” And yet, as he points out, that difficulty becomes part of the attraction. “But then that difficulty becomes the challenge.”
Projects have come and gone. Ideas delayed and tempered by bureaucracy and licensing issues. “I’ve had my fair share of illogical and bureaucratic misfortune. Amazing concepts and ideas crushed by often bizarre, counterproductive legislation.”
Despite the setbacks, his affection for the island has never diminished. “Ibiza is probably at its most commercial peak, but spiritually it has always held a very special magic.”
Today, living in Cala Tarida, that magic still reveals itself in quieter moments. “The sunsets are incredible. Cala Comte, Time & Space, Es Vedrà… those places are very dear to me.” Having spent more than three decades immersed in nightlife, Mellor has watched club culture evolve dramatically. As superstar DJs command fees once unimaginable, he accepts the industry has inevitably changed. “It’s become more about selling a brand than the music. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just a very different thing.” He remembers when nights like Manumission blurred the line between audience and performance. “You were part of that show.”
Today, too many people experience the night through a mobile phone.“Dance floors are about escapism. They’re about escaping everyday life. Then an email, a WhatsApp or a text brings reality crashing back.” He adds another observation that many clubbers may recognise. “Then you’ve got some clown recording ten minutes of the DJ. When are you ever going to watch that back? And if you do, it sounds horrible on a phone recording”
For Mellor, however, the answer isn’t nostalgia. It isn’t about recreating the past. It’s about rediscovering what made those nights meaningful in the first place. That philosophy has become the foundation of Nocturna. “I think Ibiza is at a pivot point. The clubs have become gigantic festival-scale machines. They’re incredible spectacles, but they’ve also become impersonal.” Rather than competing with the island’s biggest venues, Nocturna has deliberately chosen intimacy over spectacle. “A moment trapped between the past and the future, a psychology in audio and the colour red”.
Instead of building around celebrity, it has been built around sound. “We’ve spent as much money on the sound system as we have on the entire rest of the design. At the end of it all, music is the heart of what we are and what a club should be.” Inspired by Japan’s audiophile listening rooms, Nocturna combines exceptional acoustics with an intimate dance floor designed to encourage connection rather than distraction. “We want people to hear tracks they’ve listened to a thousand times and suddenly discover new depths in that music.” More importantly, he hopes they leave with something that extends beyond the music itself. “Having met new people, becoming new friends and building a community.”
Nocturna is not Mellor’s first attempt to create this kind of space. Earlier concepts, including HANGAR 8289 and NUI, were ultimately undone by licensing challenges and bureaucracy. “Third time lucky… This time we’re here to stay.” Throughout Aaron Mellor’s reflections, one message keeps returning. Not bigger. Not louder. Not more expensive. Simply more human.
Perhaps that is why Nocturna feels less like the opening of another Ibiza nightclub and more like the latest chapter in a lifelong pursuit of creating spaces where music is truly heard, strangers become friends and communities are built. Or, as Aaron Mellor puts it himself: “Soul is always about the people, the community, a shared understanding.” And perhaps his final thought says even more. “Intimacy is always a luxury.” On an island celebrated for its world-famous superclubs, Aaron Mellor is making a different bet: that the future of nightlife may not lie in becoming bigger, but in bringing people closer together.
