1. Put The Record On, Mr.DJ!
It wouldn’t be a (rave) party without them, and so it wouldn’t be a Party issue without at least
briefly talking about them...
It’s amazing to go to a rave party and see thousands of people—including yours truly—entrance
just because the work of one man: the DJ. He’s not manically strumming a guitar or mercilessly
pounding on the drums, but instead he’s got a switch-filled board in front of him, a monitor, an
earphone comfily perched on his head, and yet...he’s got the audience dancing off their feet.
I had a first-hand experience back in the days when I became kind of a “groupie” to my
DJ friend; we faithfully tail him whenever he had a gig in someplace cool. (Our “basecamp” was
the now closed Embassy club in Senayan area, Jakarta.) And that experience does lend itself to
a certain lifestyle, one which consists of an abundance of free booze, drugs, and women.
But, of course, when our friend played, we were ecstatic as the beat starts to energize
our body. Watching him played there is an undeniable allure radiating from the lone gunmen
onstage: even though physically they might not pass a One Direction new member audition but
the one lingering perception is that they are...cool. Oh by the way, it will take more than 10
fingers to count how many girlfriends my DJ friend had even in the past two years.
Naturally being a DJ isn’t driven by adulation. Take for example the surprisingly
teetotaler Indonesian DJ, Dipha Barus, who said that the music is the drug itself. “I don’t drink
alcohol, I don’t smoke, and I don’t do drugs,” he says. “And I do kinda have a ‘groupie’ but we’re
all here because we love dance music.”
But he admits there is another “drug” that he is addicted to. ““I definitely feed off the
energy from the crowd—that’s my foundation,” says Dipha. “When I watched my role models—
Anton Wirjono and Diplo—I get that same feeling. I just love how they were able to connect with
the crowd. Being a DJ myself, when I watched them perform I felt like I was in a classroom!”
The DJs of today have definitely gotten a boost in popularity ever since the booming of
electronic dance music around the world and also because there are an increasing number of
DJs gaining fame not unlike the status achieved by A-list celebrities. Now we’ve got DJs like
Aviici, Calvin Harris, Zedd, David Guetta, who became even more famous when they are paired
with pop starlets like Rihanna or Selena Gomez. (As in the case of Harris, hooking up with
Taylor Swift.)
Even though CD sales has plummeted 14 percent in 2014, but Calvin Harris—one of the
biggest and, according to Forbes, the highest earning DJ with his residency at the MGM Grand
nightclub in Las Vegas reportedly earned him an astounding $10 million—isn’t discouraged by
that fact, especially seeing there’s a double increase in attendance for concerts and live shows.
“Kids that download, they are looking for that connection with the artist and that excitement is
now coming from the live show,” Harris said in an interview.
Indonesia is also a haven for rave parties—though sadly not yet up to the standards of
Ibiza or even Singapore—but Jakarta and Bali has consistently shared hosting duties with
Djakarta Warehouse Project (DWP) became one of the most talked about event these past few
years. The Sunblast Ultraglow Festival (SUF) in Bali has also made a splash amongst local and
international partygoers.

2. British-born DJ and W Retreat Spa Music Curator, Damian Saint, has been living in Bali
for seven years now and naturally he’s seen first hand the craziness of the party scenes in Bali.
“It’s really difficult to pick out one particular night after seven years—I could get in trouble,” says
Damian. “But one that stands out would be a heavy session at Magdelena’s with hardcore
alcohol ‘legend’, Danny Fry, and Ben Westbeech [aka Breach] who was over to perform at W
with us. We all had far too much to drink when Ben decided he was going to take over the decks
to sing, DJ and kick the Pop Kids off in the middle of their set. He ended up plugging the
headphones, crashed the laptop, and broke the decks. I also recall a fight breaking between
Danny and a Dolph Lundgren lookalike too. The rest is a blur.”
And like so many of us partygoers, we too feel that the rest was a blur.
Text by Sahiri Loing