42 THENEWYORKER,OCTOBER3, 2022
PROFILES
SEIZE THE NIGHT
The d.j. who rules Ibiza.BY EDCAESARSolomun manning the decks at Pacha in Ibiza. He is renowned for both his musical taste and his stM
idsummer in Ibiza, ten min-
utes to midnight. At a long
table in the dimly lit garden
of Can Domingo, a restaurant in the
southern hills, two dozen people picked
over the remains of a generous dinner:
ravioli, veal Milanese, caponata. Gerd
Janson, a forty-five-year-old German
d.j. with courtly manners, asked me if I
wanted a little more fish. He was dressed
like one of the Royal Tenenbaums, in
a neck scarf and a white camp-collar
shirt tucked into chinos. I was full, but
he insisted. “The fish is so delicious—
and it’s a long night,” he reminded me.
At the center of the table was an-
other d.j., Mladen Solomun—the rea-
son for this long night and many oth-
ers. Solomun is a forty-six-year-old
German-Bosnian-Croat from Ham-
burg who looks like a Visigoth chief
or a retired linebacker: six feet three
and meaty, with a graying beard and
long dark hair that he often wears
pulled back. He is known to millions
of ravers by only his last name, and to
a circle of intimates by only his first.
At Can Domingo, he was Mladen,
soft-spoken and attentive with the
Chablis. After dinner, he would be-
come Solomun, master key to the plea-
sure of thousands.
This summer, several people de-
scribed Solomun to me as the “king of
Ibiza.” He professes to hate this appel-
lation, but it has some merit. Since 2013,
except for the covid pause, he has
played at Pacha, the island’s oldest night
club, at least twenty Sundays a year.
(The parties begin at midnight and run
until dawn on Monday.) His residency,
called Solomun+1, so dominates the
scene that other clubs plan their sched-
ules around it. Ibiza Spotlight, a night-
life guide, recently called Solomun+1
the “centre of the universe.”
At Can Domingo, Solomun turned
to Janson, smiled, and said, in thickly
accented English, “Hey, it’s nearly
twelve—why aren’t you in Pacha?”
Other clubs on the island hire several
d.j.s for a single evening, and at larger
venues d.j.s play simultaneously in dif-
ferent rooms. With more names on
the bill, there is a better chance that
clubbers will spot someone they like.
Pacha has one main room, and Solo-
mun prefers a simple formula. He be-
lieves that dancers yearn to be taken