THENEWYORKER,OCTOBER3, 2022 51
ample, he was to visit a local Spanish
couple twice a week and let them talk
about their life; he should not ask ques-
tions but simply absorb their stories.
(It’s easy to imagine him doing this—
unusually for a celebrity, he is an ex-
cellent listener.) After three months,
Solomun took Communion again, and
committed to being a “good person.”
It’s odd to think of someone who par-
ties as hard as Solomun as a man of God.
But faith, he says, “flls me up.” Many of
Solomun’s closest associates are also re-
ligious. Karamanidis spent four months
in a monastery in Greece, and came back,
in Solomun’s words, a “shining person.”
Schoeps, Solomun’s manager, is also a
Christian, and sings sacred music in a
choir; on a recent weekend, he was in
Hamburg, singing bass in Mendelssohn’s
oratorio “Elijah.” (The concert, Schoeps
said, was full of “big fun.”)
Night clubs cater to base urges. At
ego, in Hamburg—which Schoeps
described to me as a “dark, sweaty,
stinky rave club”—Solomun was trou-
bled by the addled faces of the people
dancing to his sets, particularly as the
sun rose. (Ecstasy causes mouths to
dry out and jaws to set.) Regardless of
how Solomun himself got through the
night, he questioned whether it vio-
lated his faith to lure people into such
a profane environment. One day, he
and Karamanidis went on a walk to
discuss this unease. Karamanidis ar-
gued that music was itself a kind of
miracle, and that there was no shame
in uniting people through dancing.
Schoeps explained to me that, from
that point onward, Solomun saw d.j.’ing
as having a “divine power.”
“Even if I’m not trying to make my-
self so important, I can’t ignore what I
do,” Solomun said. “I touch people.”
In the living room, Solomun recalled
numinous moments from recent per-
formances. In January, he was in Mar
del Plata, Argentina, playing an open-
air set for a huge crowd. As dawn ar-
rived, he said, he began speaking to
clouds that threatened to block the sun-
rise. (“Move, clouds! Now!”) He cued
up “I Am Free,” a euphoric track by
his frequent collaborator Johannes
Brecht, who is a classically trained multi-
instrumentalist. As the first chords
began, the clouds did move, and the sun
appeared. Solomun felt goosebumps.
He sat on a speaker, pointing his fn-
gers at his temples. “God is my master,”
the male voice on the track exclaimed.
“Love is my master.... I am free!”I
n mid-August, Solomun drove from
his villa to Ibiza’s airport, where a
seven-seater Cessna Citation VI jet was
on the tarmac. Boarding with him were
Bor, two pilots, and me. In the next
three days, he would play in Sarajevo,
in Istanbul, and back at Pacha. During
the summer, Solomun flies only on pri-
vate planes. He said that he had “planted
so many trees... a forest” to assuage
his carbon guilt, but it seemed unlikely
that the planting could keep pace with
the miles. On this flight, he carried with
him a wheely suitcase and a bag flled
with pillows, blankets, and clothespins.
Solomun requires total darkness to sleep,
and the ten minutes before he goes to
bed are often spent pinning together
curtains in his hotel room.
The plane took off right after we ar-
rived at the airport. Solomun seems to
barely notice the ease with which he
now moves through the world. (On a
trip to Ibiza this summer, I waited more
than ninety minutes to clear security.
After a flight with Solomun in August,
the pilots apologized for making him
a few minutes late because they’d had
to fly around a storm.) He told me that
he’d hardly slept the previous night,
such were his nerves. Many of his rel-
atives, including his mother, were at-
tending the Sarajevo show. City author-
ities had invited Solomun to play on
the balcony of the Ministry of Finance,
above the Eternal Flame, a memorial
built after the Second World War. Tito
Street, the thoroughfare by the memo-
rial, would be closed off to cars for sev-
eral hours. There was no +1 on the bill.
The pressure weighed on Solomun. He
wasn’t sure how to start the set.
In the summer, Solomun spends at
least two days a week in his villa, listen-
ing to new music sent to him by artists
both established and unknown, and de-
ciding which tracks to play—and which
acts to sign to his label. He tries to fol-
low only his taste. Idris Elba started
d.j.’ing in Ibiza a few years ago, and sent
DIYnamic one of his mixes, in the hope
of garnering a +1 spot at Pacha. Solo-
mun admires Elba’s acting, particularly
in “The Wire” and “Luther,” but he didnot enjoy Elba’s mix. He passed, politely.
Solomun often uses a plane trip to
consider options for an upcoming per-
formance, or to edit tracks. Over the
Mediterranean, he opened his laptop,
put in AirPods, and assembled perhaps
twenty options for opening the Sara-
jevo gig. Occasionally, he pounded the
air with his fst as he listened. I couldn’t
hear the music, and these spasmodic
outbursts sometimes made me flinch.
Solomun spent most of the flight
fddling with one track, which he will
release in October on DIYnamic:
“Yumi,” by the young French producer
Notre Dame. The progression on
“Yumi” walks a line between euphoria
and melancholy. Solomun was enrap-
tured by the track, and had fnished
many recent sets with it, but on the
plane he wondered if he could better
exploit the tension that Notre Dame
builds in the frst ninety seconds by ex-
tending one section. Solomun told me
that he wanted to “fnd the right dose”
of beauty. He made the edit, though
he wouldn’t really know if the change
worked until he played it live. Solomun
saved the fle, and put the USB stick
in the Aristocats bag.S
olomun’s most famous set is one
that he recorded for the video ser-
vice Boiler Room, from Tulum, Mex-
ico, in 2015. It’s been watched nearly
sixty million times on YouTube. A Sol-
omun set in 2022 bears little resem-
blance to the one in the video—it’s
hard to believe it’s the same d.j. The
seductive, languid Tulum sound has
given way to a harder, faster experience.
There are fewer opportunities to sway
your hips when Solomun plays now.
During the pandemic, he began to
favor grittier and more energetic music.
When he resumed d.j.’ing, his sets re-
f lected this change. Indeed, at some
recent shows, Solomun has played as
many as six tracks by Matt Guy—a pro-
ducer from Nottingham who creates
sledgehammer rave tracks like “Krupa”
and “Party Starter.” Solomun’s support
has transformed Guy’s career. In Europe,
he is now played on mainstream radio.
“I’ve always been a massive fan of Solo-
mun,” Guy told me. “But never in a mil-
lion years would I have expected him to
play something like ‘Party Starter.’ ”
Solomun told me that he was simply