50 THENEWYORKER,OCTOBER3, 2022
the d.j. cared more about the dancers
than about his ego, Solomun explained.
Koze finished with one of his own
tracks, “Drone Me Up, Flashy,” recently
remixed by &ME—nine minutes of
floaty, transcendent house.
Solomun wanted to go home, but it
took him nearly an hour to reach the
car. “It’s absurd,” he said. “People say
beautiful things to me... but I want
to forget it the second they finish the
sentence.” It made him uncomfortable
that a d.j. “who didn’t even play an in-
strument” should be so venerated—he
was just one node in a galaxy of music.
Solomun also recognized that, though
some people were attuned to his gifts
as a d.j. or a producer, others were re-
acting only to his celebrity. Getting into
the car, he seemed upset. “Coming here
is ten times more stressful than play-
ing my own night,” he said. “In Pacha,
I’m protected.”
S
olomun has rented the same ele-
gant, enormous villa in Ibiza for the
past six years. Until last summer, he
shared the house with members of
his management team. He now lives
there alone, except for the twelve feral
cats he feeds. Solomun has had seri-
ous relationships with women, but he
is currently single. The morning after
our night at DC10, I walked into his
kitchen. There were several pans that
needed washing. A well-used German
copy of Jamie Oliver’s “15-Minute
Meals” sat on the counter.
Solomun doesn’t own a house,
though he has bought two apartments
for his mother, in Croatia and in Ham-
burg. He recently searched for a place
in Lisbon, but he didn’t find anything
that he wanted to buy. With his sched-
ule, it’s difficult to settle somewhere.
Between May and October, he lives in
Ibiza but performs around Europe. In
the fall, he travels to Central and South
America, where he has many fans. By
the end of winter, he’s back in Europe,
spending two months making music
and refining his taste for the summer
season. Then it’s May, and Ibiza, again.
“Ibiza feels like my home now,” Sol-
omun told me. “But, when I meet the
right person, then I will know where
my home is.”
He was on a call when I arrived at
the villa, so Bor took me into the liv-
ing room. The interior was whitewashed
in the ibicenco style. Takeout contain-
ers for Solomun—bought and deliv-
ered by Bor—were waiting on the cof-
fee table. The windows were open to a
terrace, and the chirp of cicadas flooded
in. A giant pair of Air Jordans had been
kicked off haphazardly.
Solomun entered the room. After
greeting me, he walked to a corner, where
he lit a candle on what resembled an
altar. Icons of Jesus, Mary, and two an-
gels had been arranged above a fireplace.
After lighting the candle, Solomun ad-
dressed the altar, crossed himself, and
walked away. I hadn’t known that he
was religious. He showed me a photo-
graph from when he had met the Pope,
in 2019, and said that he liked to keep
a candle burning day and night on the
altar. “It protects me,” he said.
Solomun then recounted a story
about his faith. Bosnian Croats are Cath-
olics in a majority-Muslim country. In
Hamburg, he received his First Com-
munion at the age of ten, but he rarely
attended Mass. When he was twen-
ty-three, despondent, and working con-
struction, he spent a day off wandering
the streets. A “force, a power,” guided
him into a church.
Inside, he recognized the priest who
had given him his First Communion.
Solomun said that he was lost. The
priest gave him a three-month series
of activities to reawaken him. For ex-