June 2011
Boshe VVIP was (is?) the big, big club in Yogyakarta, and when I got a chance to play there, I was trying to do three things that resulted in another so-so mix: (1) Play some stuff at 70 bpm. I’ve never loved dubstep or trap, but no one in Yogyakarta played anything that slow, so I figured I’d try it out. (2) Keep it in the universe of popular house that the crowd wanted (cf. the Republic mixtape, made the month before, and the next mixtape, which is all music from the charts). And (3), play some tunes I actually like, hence “Roadrunner,” “The Bomb (These Sounds Fall into My Mind),” “Blue Monday,” the Morsy “Don’t You Want Me” remix, “Doobie Bras,” etc. I wanted to represent the original JJC style a little more heavily than on the Republic mixtape.
Predictably, the set was not a huge success in the club. The crowd seemed confused, and I did what DJs are not supposed to do: I stuck to my set and wouldn’t let them pull me off early. I could have switched to Dutch/electro remixes of all the pop tunes and won them over, but fuck that. Why feed crowds the same dreck they can get every night, everywhere else? I’m glad I didn’t, because these days it looks like folks in Jogja are playing nu-disco in loungier settings, and dubstep and trap are well represented in the big clubs. Maybe a few people in the scene even remember those 45 minutes in 2011 when I played this set of joints that made Boshe feel a little weird.
