on a musical journey, and that the way
to lead them is to create a long, involv-
ing set. When Solomun plays, he in-
vites only one other d.j., his “+1”—to-
night it would be Janson. The guest
plays from midnight until 2:30 a.m.,
Solomun plays from 2:30a.m. until
5 a.m., and then the pair perform to-
gether, or “back-to-back,” for the final
two hours, finishing at 7a.m.
Janson had been aware that mid-
night was approaching, but he wasn’t
one to make a fuss. Indeed, he had been
chatting pleasantly with Solomun about
the insanity of their schedules. The next
day, Janson would take three round-
about flights to get to Corsica, for a
gig that evening. “I’m a working-class
kid,” he said. “I have to work.”
At midnight, a Pacha employee
drove Janson away in a van. The other
diners were in no rush: Paul Bor, Sol-
omun’s tour manager, who is almost
always by his side; a famous German
actor; a currency trader from London,
who met Solomun on a health retreat;
a Croat tech guy who lives in L.A. Typ-
ically, Solomun doesn’t arrive at Pacha
until nearly 2 a.m. When the check
arrived, Solomun paid, and everyone
returned to their villas to shower and
change before the night—or the morn-
ing—began in earnest.N
inety minutes after leaving Can
Domingo, Solomun arrived at
Pacha in a fresh black T-shirt, black
pants with a white stripe down the side,
Air Jordans, and a Yankees cap. He was
carrying USB sticks, containing tens
of thousands of tracks, in a pink Aris-
tocats purse that he’d spotted in an
Ibiza supermarket earlier in the sum-
mer. Solomun started mixing in the
vinyl era, when d.j.s lugged boxes of
records to their events. He told me that
he remained, at heart, an “analog guy”—
he hated that clubbers recorded videos
on cell phones rather than immersing
themselves in the experience. But he
conceded that the digital age had been
good for his lower back.
Pacha is in a casa payesa—a tradi-
tional farmhouse—and its layout is ec-centric. Reaching the d.j. booth from
the street feels like a psychedelic re-cre-
ation of the Steadicam shot in “Good-
Fellas”: after walking past a security
guard, you enter a garden filled with
sculptures of unicorns, giraffes, and
naked women, then follow a winding
corridor, lined with red lights, that leads
you past a bustling kitchen and mixed-
sex bathrooms into the main room of
the club, where you pass through the
V.I.P. area and, finally, down a small
flight of stairs. The loudness is engulf-
ing. Mesmeric hexagonal light panels
rise and fall over the dance floor in re-
sponse to the music, making the club
feel like a living organism. The Brit-
ish designers who created the display,
Helen Swan and Chris Carr, were in-
spired by Émile Durkheim’s 1912 book,
“Elementary Forms of Religious Life,”
which describes “collective efferves-
cence”—in which individuals become
a group by communicating through
action alone.
The booth is about thirty feet wide
and has its own small bar for the d.j.
and his friends. Two club employees
guard entry, and no amount of money
or celebrity guarantees admission. You
can’t press music on the d.j., or get too
close or too drunk. Bor, the tour man-
ager, oversees what he calls “booth pol-
itics,” and any infraction of the un-
written code can lead to ejection. The
truly elect are invited to take an occa-
sional shot of tequila with Solomun.
The brand on his rider is Clase Azul
Reposado, which the club brings in
specifically for him. Solomun some-
times drinks more than thirty shots of
tequila during a night at the decks,
with no visible change in his sobriety.
By the time Solomun arrived, Jan-
son was at the apex of his set. He fussed
at the four decks in front of him: they
were equipped with circular jog wheels,
for navigating a particular track; slid-
ers, for adjusting tempo and volume;
and an array of dials and buttons that
perform various functions, from eight-
bar loops to drumrolls. Pacha, which
can hold more than three thousand
people, was at the edge of its capacity.
In front of the booth, general-admis-
sion clubbers, most of whom had paid
seventy euros a ticket, bounced around.
Behind Janson was the V.I.P. area, where
securing the best table—close to the“Please remove your shoes, realize you forgot to wear socks,
accept your fate, and make peace with your god.”