Midsummer in Ibiza, ten minutes 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. 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. At the center of the table was another d. Solomun is a forty-six-year-old German-Bosnian-Croat from Hamburg 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 become Solomun, master key to the pleasure of thousands. The parties begin at midnight and run until dawn on Monday. With more names on the bill, there is a better chance that clubbers will spot someone they like. Pacha has one main room, and Solomun prefers a simple formula. He believes that dancers yearn to be taken on a musical journey, and that the way to lead them is to create a long, involving set.
When Solomun plays, he invites only one other d. The guest plays from midnight until a. Indeed, he had been chatting pleasantly with Solomun about the insanity of their schedules. The next day, Janson would take three roundabout flights to get to Corsica, for a gig that evening. At midnight, a Pacha employee drove Janson away in a van. When the check arrived, Solomun paid, and everyone returned to their villas to shower and change before the night—or the morning—began in earnest.
Ninety 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. Solomun started mixing in the vinyl era, when d. But he conceded that the digital age had been good for his lower back. Pacha is in a casa payesa —a traditional farmhouse—and its layout is eccentric. Reaching the d. The loudness is engulfing. Mesmeric hexagonal light panels rise and fall over the dance floor in response to the music, making the club feel like a living organism.
