52 THENEWYORKER,OCTOBER3, 2022
broadening his outlook. “This year, I re-
ally dig and love this kind of nineties
sound... breakbeat, a little bit trance-y,
almost Robin S.-style, but in a fresh way,”
he said. “But these days I love more and
more styles, and it’s getting harder and
harder to build bridges during the sets.
For me, that’s the big challenge.”
The changes haven’t delighted ev-
eryone. On a message board, one club-
ber who attended Solomun+1 in 2022
complained of the “weird shit” he
played; another declared that he was
at “the end of the road” with Solomun.
After Solomun played a rowdy set in
London, a fan wrote on Instagram, “I
love your music you really need to go
back to your old stuff though!”
Solomun doesn’t read online com-
ments and has social-media accounts
only because they are necessary for
work. He says he knows that, when you
change your sound, “sometimes you’re
losing people”—but this can be hard
to gauge. Whenever he looks out from
his booth, he sees a sea of happy ravers.
D.j. sets are often recorded, and the
best retain a transporting quality. I have
listened to Solomun’s Essential Mix,
recorded at Pacha in 2016, dozens of
times; it continues to surprise me. The
moment when a cello enters on a Jo-
hannes Brecht track called “Voix Grave”
is chilling and propulsive. (In an e-mail,
Brecht described that passage, in which
the cellist Nayon Han interacts with a
constantly modulating digital arpeg-
gio, as a human and a machine in di-
alogue with each other.) But a set can-
not be designed as a future relic. It is
a work of improvisation that succeeds
or fails as it flows onto the dance floor.
Solomun says that his job is to “create
moments.” The evanescence is the thing.
Sam Houser, a co-creator of Grand
Theft Auto and a founder of Rockstar
Games, first listened to Solomun as a
general-admission clubber in Pacha,
several years ago. They are now friends,
and—among other collaborations—
Solomun is a character in the G.T.A.
universe, whose sets you can listen to
in a virtual club. (Solomun wasn’t paid
for this; Schoeps described the arrange-
ment as “a friendship thing.”) Houser
told me that hearing Solomun live was
“breathtaking,” adding, “Mladen has a
unique way of taking control and lead-
ing the crowd into his vibe as he slowly
and methodically builds the energy.”
Though Solomun concedes that
some of his tastes have changed, he
doesn’t think that his sound has be-
come too hard-edged to enjoy. Wher-
ever he plays, he considers the needs
of the crowd. Pacha, for instance, is “a
sexy club—you can’t play a techno set
in Pacha.” In June, I went to an open-
air venue in Ibiza called Destino, where
Solomun played mostly light, melodic
house at sundown. He wasn’t above
playing something so surprising that
it made people laugh. Midway through
the set, he dropped the whiny nineties
hip-hop track “Insane in the Brain,”
by Cypress Hill. It was like pumping
helium onto the dance floor.
Solomun told me that he craved va-
riety when producing music, too. Last
year, he released “Nobody Is Not
Loved,” a smooth dance album whose
influences—synth-pop, indie, R. & B.—
belied the ferocity of most of his re-
cent live output. This summer, Solo-
mun played me a bossa-nova remix that
he’d made of José González’s “Swing,”
noting that it had made him as cheer-
ful as any other work he’d done lately.
“I like changes,” he explained. “I want
to have fun. If I’m not having fun, I
can’t transmit the happiness.”I
n Sarajevo, more than twenty thou-
sand people waited in the streets for
Solomun’s show. Elections loom in Bos-
nia, and the country is politically frag-
ile, as old hatreds are rekindled. The
European Union Ambassador to Bos-nia, Johann Sattler, who is encourag-
ing talks among factions, had secured
funds from the E.U. for Solomun to
play. “Culture is a great unifier,” he told
me. He knew nothing of Solomun’s
music but did know that many people
in Bosnia loved him.
Solomun was driven, with his mother
and cousins, to the Ministry of Finance.
Dressed in a black T-shirt with animage of the “Mona Lisa” on the back,
he stepped onto the balcony. Noisy
good will poured toward him. He raised
his arms in acknowledgment and began
manning his controls. It was just pos-
sible to see the back of the crowd on
Tito Street. People waited to dance in
their apartments, near open windows.
Halfway up the street, where pedestri-
ans were pressed tight, the traffic lights
changed, pointlessly.
As Solomun stood at his decks, it
seemed suddenly obvious how to begin:
“Swing.” Soon afterward, he played the
remix of “Drone Me Up, Flashy” that
had beguiled him at DC10. It was as
if Solomun were curating a musical ex-
perience entirely to delight me. Per-
haps I had spent so much time in his
company that my preferences had con-
verged with his. And maybe this was
a skill of good d.j.s—to wrestle your
taste toward theirs.
Some tunes have recurred in almost
every Solomun set this summer—tunes
that he can’t get out of his head. Being
in Solomun’s head is a valuable place
to be. One track that he played in Sa-
rajevo was “Como,” a dark banger that
has not yet been released. It was pro-
duced by Disfreq—two Irish brothers,
Joe and Cahir Kelly, who make un-
usual, acid-tinged techno using analog
synthesizers, and who work out of a
studio above a chip shop in their home
town of Moville, County Donegal. Sol-
omun started playing Disfreq’s music
last year, during his South America
tour. “You instantly get loads of respect
as soon as he starts playing you,” Joe
told me.
Many Disfreq tracks have now been
signed to influential labels, including
to DIYnamic. This summer, Joe went
to Pacha on a Sunday. He was d.j.’ing
at Amnesia the following night, but he
wanted to witness Solomun+1—and,
maybe, hear one of his own tracks. He
stood near the front of the crowd and
used Snapchat to display a message to
Solomun, in text large enough that the
d.j. could read it: “Hi Mladen, it’s Dis-
freq :)” Solomun saw the note, and had
Bor bring Kelly to the booth. An hour
later, Solomun played “Como.” He
danced next to Kelly as the track shook
the club. “One of the best nights of my
life,” Kelly told me. “The hairs on the
back of my neck were standing up.”