If you’ve clicked onto this story and are now under the impression Ears To The House has turned into a satirical website, you could be half forgiven. But this actually is the situation facing Ibiza club DC-10 right now – meaning they’ve had to close off the garden entirely.

Amidst a crackdown by Ibiza authorities on what they term “excessive noise” – the same “excessive noise” which they happily tolerated for decades before now, strangely enough – they’ve been told the noise levels outside the club must be no more than 75 decibels. But what does this mean in practice?

Well, Creative Field Recording put together an interesting chart with various decibel readings in it. Assuming this is correct – and we see little reason to question why they wouldn’t be – DC-10 can make slightly more noise than am electric shaver, but must make less noise than a hairdryer…

So who is making these complaints specifically about DC-10? The authorities are obviously never going to share these details – but a few things can be deduced. Whilst complaints from residents can’t be entirely ruled out, the more remote area of the island where DC-10 is based makes this less likely.

Also, Airport D’Eivissa is less than three miles away – and aircraft noise levels can be anywhere between 110 and 140 decibels on the scale. Yet as far as Ears To The House can establish, no one has complained about the noise emanating from the nearby airport.

Which leaves the distinctly unsavoury possibility that people associated with rival nightclubs are putting in complaints to the authorities. A far fetched line of thinking? Quite possibly – but bearing in mind this is probably the most difficult Ibiza season in a number of years and the fact we have it on good authority this kind of behaviour has happened before, we can’t rule it out either.

Exactly how long the current state of affairs will go on remains to be seen – a lot seems to depend on island politics. And whilst there is something eminently ridiculous about moving to an area famous for noise only to complain about it – we reported on a case of this in Manchester last year – we suspect they’re not the only ones stirring this pot…