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Life isn't about eating pasta every day; life offers you so many opportunities, so many choices, and I I try to transport that feeling into my music somehow.

90 minutes of Enchantment

/ how solomun cast a spell on, kappa futurfestival.

60 Million Strong:

/ the epic boiler room set, that shook the world.

Echoes of the Ancients

/ solomun's captivating symphony, at the roman theatre of orange.

Subterranean Bliss Unleashed

/ solomun's hypnotic invasion and, sonic tectonics at time warp 2019.

Pacha and Ibiza are like a second home to me. I have a special connection with the island and the club. It's an honor to be part of the Pacha family and share our passion for music and unforgettable experiences.

Solomun's relationship with Ibiza has been nothing short of extraordinary. Although he first visited the island in 2011, it was in 2012 that he really made a name for himself. He quickly built a strong bond with one of Ibiza's most iconic clubs, Pacha. Together, they revolutionised the techno scene with their groundbreaking night parties and VIP guests. Solomun's infectious energy brought everyone together on the dancefloor, creating an unforgettable atmosphere that kept fans coming back for more. His two residency gigs on the island were a game-changer, giving him the freedom to experiment with his style and create some of his most memorable sets. His is groundbreaking concept of "Solomun +1" really set him apart from the rest. This unique format saw Solomun invite a different DJ to play alongside him each week, resulting in some unforgettable performances. ‍ Ibiza and Solomun share an unbreakable bond that has redefined nightlife. From his electrifying sets to his one-of-a-kind parties, Solomun has brought an unparalleled level of excitement and energy to the clubbing scene. His legacy on the island will endure for years to come, as he continues to innovate and push boundaries in his musical career.

            Solomun is not just a master of his craft, but also an award-winning artist with a track record of excellence. He has been recognized as one of the best producers, DJs and melodic house DJs in the world, and has won multiple DJ Awards over the years. With 4 wins to his name, including Best Producer, Best DJ and Best Melodic House DJ, Solomun has cemented his status as a true icon of the dance music scene. His unique sound, innovative approach and unforgettable performances have earned him the respect and admiration of fans and fellow artists alike, making him a force to be reckoned with in the industry.

/ Winner - Best International DJ – Cool Awards Brazil (BR)

/ Winner - Category: Melodic House and Techno - DJ Awards Ibiza (ES) / Best DJ: #3 // FAZE Mag (DE/AT/CH)

/ Best DJ: #1 // FAZE Mag (DE/AT/CH) / Best Remix: Age Of Love – The Age Of Love (Solomun Renaissance Remix)  FAZE Mag (DE/AT/CH)

/ Best DJ: #1 (Deep House, public vote) // Beatport / Best DJ: #5 // Resident Advisor / Best DJ: #1 // DJ Mag Italia (IT) / Best Night: “Solomun+1″ (Sundays at Pacha) // DJ Mag Italia (IT) / Best Remixes // DJ Mag Italia (IT):Whilk & Misky - Clap Your Hands -- ( Solomun Remix) O st & Kjex - Queen of Europe (Solomun Remix) / Best Night: “Solomun+1″ (Sundays at Pacha) // DJ Mag Italia (IT) 3 Whilk & Misky - Clap Your Hands (Solomun Remix) ‍

/ Winner - Category: Deep House - DJ Awards Ibiza (ES) / Winner - Best DJ: Solomun - DJ Mag Italia (IT) / Winner - Best Night: “Solomun +1″ (Sundays at Pacha) - DJ Mag Italia (IT) / Best DJ #13 - Resident Advisor (UK)

/ Best DJ No. 26 - Resident Advisor (UK)

/ Winner - Category: Deep House - DJ Awards Ibiza (ES) / Best DJ #24 - Resident Advisor (UK)

/ Winner - DJ of the Year – Mixmag Magazine (UK) / Winner - Best Producer – DJ Awards Ibiza (ES) / Winner - Best International DJ – Cool Awards Brazil (BR) / Best International Tour – Rio Music Conference Award (BR) / Best Producer – Groove Magazine (DE, AT, CH) / Best Label Diynamic – Groove Magazine (DE, AT, CH) / Best DJ No. 03 – Groove Magazine (DE, AT, CH) / Best Track No. 04 Kackvogel – Groove Magazine (DE, AT, CH) / Best Producer No. 6 – Faze Mag (DE, AT, CH) / Best Label Diynamic No. 5 Faze Mag (DE, AT, CH) / Best Track No. 14 Kackvogel – Faze Mag (DE,AT,CH) / Best DJ No. 22 – Resident Advisor (UK) / Best Compilation No. 05 (Watergate 11) – DJ Mag (UK) / Best Compilation No. 05 (Watergate 11) – Mixmag Magazine (UK) ‍ ‍

/ Remix of the Year- Around (Noir & Haze) - Resident Advisor (UK) / Most Charted Artist" No. 04 Resident Advisor (UK) / Best Remix No. 02 – Around (Noir & Haze) - Groove Magazine (DE, AT, CH) / Best Remix No. 03 - Let's Go Back (Kraak & Smaak ) - Groove Magazine (DE, AT, CH) / Best Producer No. 02 - Groove Magazine (DE, AT, CH) / Best DJ No. 03 - Groove Magazine (DE, AT, CH) / Best DJ No. 05 - De:Bug Magazine (DE, AT, CH)

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Dj solomun's beats, as the dancefloor.

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Solomun tour dates 2024

Solomun is currently touring across 5 countries and has 5 upcoming concerts.

Their next tour date is at Exposition Park in Los Angeles (LA), after that they'll be at Chateau De Chantilly in Chantilly.

Currently touring across

Upcoming concerts (5) See nearest concert

Exposition Park

Chateau De Chantilly

Kappa FuturFestival

Untold Festival

Creamfields

Past concerts

Movement Music Festival

Solomun au Parc Jean-Drapeau

Location Tba, New York City, Brooklyn

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Recent tour reviews

Great show from Solomun, not always the bests mixes but at the second part of the show, after 11.00 pm was fantastic, specialy Maceo Plex remix of The Smiths How Soon is Now !

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Originally from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mladen Solomun, or just his stage name Solomun, has been touring the international House EDM scene. Using his inspiration from R&B, Funk, Disco and 80s pop music; he infuses powerful vocals into House music to create something truly unique.

While he has played a lot of fairly large venues, he is in his element the best inside of dance clubs. Usually set up on the stage, he has his table set up, and the lighting comes from the light fixture that spells out his name right above his table. As he spins, he is dancing, just like everyone else in the club. He does allow people around him as he spins, and is clearly having a party. His transitions are flawless, smoothly flowing from one track to the next without having your dance party interrupted. Every so often he will even have a guest come spin with him on stage. He balances his sets with a mix of remixes of songs that he has done, as well as original songs that he produced. He doesn’t speak much, but it’s not necessary for him to, since the focus is on the tracks that he is spinning.

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SOLOMUN - SYDNEY

SOLOMUN – SYDNEY

T1000 events are proud to present the three time ‘best dj in the world’ solomun, who will be performing an extended set in sydney’s mighty hordern pavilion this april..

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Solomun  has played a major role in redefining European house music with productions, remixes and DJing by taking the very building blocks of House and deftly reconstructing them with a modern twist. A respected underground DJ and producer for a number of years, his stratospheric rise in popularity kicked off in 2012. The same year Mixmag Magazine voted him as “DJ of the Year” and his popularity has continued to soar.

His Ibiza success story began in 2013, when he inaugurated his infamous “Solomun+1” residency at Pacha, which instantly became the island’s go-to event on Sunday nights. 2015 saw the commencement of his second residency concept: “Solomun+live” is an outdoor daytime event with nothing but live-acts as his special guests. Solomun loves working in the studio, but his passion for DJing and performing is obvious to anyone who has seen him play anywhere around the world.

His infamous Boiler Room set from early 2015 is the fastest growing Boiler Room video of all time, with around 18 million views – and counting. He is not afraid of taking the audience on a journey. About his style, where vigour, deepness and emotion go hand in hand in a very musical way, Solomun once said: “People have emotions. So why not on a dancefloor?”

Running two successful labels, (Diynamic, 2DIY4) and Ibiza residencies (Solomun+1 at Pacha, Solomun+LIVE at Ushuaia) or the Diynamic Radio show, which is broadcasted in about 30 countries – it is all connected with Solomun’s passion for music. He does so much in the same way he manages the variety of influences on his music: with a soft touch, a little dance move and real honest commitment to “Doing It Yourself”.

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EVENT DETAILS

Location: Hordern Pavilion Date: Friday 13 April Time: 8.00pm – 12.00am

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On sale 8.00am Wednesday 28 February  through Ticketek .

PRE-SALE – SOLD OUT! FIRST RELEASE – SOLD OUT! SECOND RELEASE – SOLD OUT!

FINAL RELEASE NOW ON SALE!

SOLOMUN AFTERPARTY – SYDNEY

• Hordern ticket holders ($50+BF), Hordern wristband is required on entry – no wristband no entry! 
• Home Only ticket ($80+BF) is open to anyone.

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Location: Home The Venue Date: Friday 13 April Time: 10.00pm – 4.00am

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• We are strictly 18+ event, ID must be shown on entry
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• Lost tickets will not be replaced and there will be no pass-outs or re-admissions to the event.
• Buying or selling tickets on third party websites (such as eBay and Gumtree) is NOT permitted. If a ticket is bought, sold or offered for re-sale on a third party website the Event Promoter may cancel the ticket without refund and you will be refused entry to the event.
• Look after your mates

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• To ensure the validity of the ticket, we require your name to be on your ticket. Please make sure you have all attendees names, emails and mobile phone numbers ready as these will be required when purchasing tickets online.
• At the event, security will check to ensure your name on your ID matches the name on your ticket.
• Name changes will be available through our website when tickets have sold out, and later in the year for a limited time. Please note that name changes will incur an admin fee.

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Seize the Night

By Ed Caesar

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.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 another d.j., Mladen Solomun—the reason for this long night and many others. 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.

This summer, several people described Solomun to me as the “king of Ibiza.” He professes to hate this appellation, 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 schedules 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 different 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 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.j., his “+1”—tonight it would be Janson. The guest plays from midnight until 2:30 a.m. , Solomun plays from 2:30  a.m. until 5  a.m. , and then the pair perform together, or “back-to-back,” for the final two hours, finishing at 7  a.m .

Janson had been aware that midnight was approaching, but he wasn’t one to make a fuss. 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. “I’m a working-class kid,” he said. “I have to work.”

At midnight, a Pacha employee drove Janson away in a van. The other diners were in no rush: Paul Bor, Solomun’s tour manager, who is almost always by his side; a famous German actor; a currency trader from London, who met Solomun on a health retreat; a Croat tech guy who lives in L.A. Typically, Solomun doesn’t arrive at Pacha until nearly 2 a.m . 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. He was carrying USB sticks, containing tens of thousands of tracks, in a pink Aristocats purse that he’d spotted in an Ibiza supermarket earlier in the summer. Solomun started mixing in the vinyl era, when d.j.s lugged boxes of records to their events. He told me that he remained, at heart, an “analog guy”—he hated that clubbers recorded videos on cell phones rather than immersing themselves in the experience. 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.j. booth from the street feels like a psychedelic re-creation of the Steadicam shot in “GoodFellas”: after walking past a security guard, you enter a garden filled with sculptures of unicorns, giraffes, and naked women, then follow a winding corridor, lined with red lights, that leads you past a bustling kitchen and mixed-sex bathrooms into the main room of the club, where you pass through the V.I.P. area and, finally, down a small flight of stairs. 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. The British designers who created the display, Helen Swan and Chris Carr, were inspired by Émile Durkheim’s 1912 book, “ Elementary Forms of Religious Life ,” which describes “collective effervescence”—in which individuals become a group by communicating through action alone.

The booth is about thirty feet wide and has its own small bar for the d.j. and his friends. Two club employees guard entry, and no amount of money or celebrity guarantees admission. You can’t press music on the d.j., or get too close or too drunk. Bor, the tour manager, oversees what he calls “booth politics,” and any infraction of the unwritten code can lead to ejection. The truly elect are invited to take an occasional shot of tequila with Solomun. The brand on his rider is Clase Azul Reposado, which the club brings in specifically for him. Solomun sometimes drinks more than thirty shots of tequila during a night at the decks, with no visible change in his sobriety.

By the time Solomun arrived, Janson was at the apex of his set. He fussed at the four decks in front of him: they were equipped with circular jog wheels, for navigating a particular track; sliders, for adjusting tempo and volume; and an array of dials and buttons that perform various functions, from eight-bar loops to drumrolls. Pacha, which can hold more than three thousand people, was at the edge of its capacity. In front of the booth, general-admission clubbers, most of whom had paid seventy euros a ticket, bounced around. Behind Janson was the V.I.P. area, where securing the best table—close to the d.j. but with space to dance—can cost twenty thousand euros.

Solomun and Janson hugged, and Janson quickly turned back to his controls. D.j.’ing requires concentration. One is not only selecting tracks but also splicing them together in tempo, and in a sympathetic key. Moreover, modern decks essentially allow a d.j. to remix tracks while playing them, and clubbers now expect some improvised wizardry within a set. During the next hour, several other prominent d.j.s joined Solomun and Janson in the booth, among them three Germans—Adam Port, &ME, and Rampa—known collectively as Keinemusik. They produce and play silky, melodic house, and this summer they were the hottest thing in dance music. (&ME and Rampa produced two tracks on Drake’s latest album, “ Honestly, Nevermind .”) They also frequently collaborate with Solomun on remixes. The trio had just flown in from New York, and they were headlining the next night at DC10—an influential club near the airport. They all looked exhausted, but, like aspirants in a medieval court, they’d come to Pacha to pay their respects.

At 2:30  a.m ., Janson was playing his final track, a buzzy remix of the 1984 Belgian disco number “Love Games.” Solomun cued up his first track—“ Dos Blokes ,” by the Spanish producer Orion Agassi—then listened to it on his headphones to insure that its beat matched the outgoing rhythm. Many ravers near the decks had pupils like bath plugs, and they greeted Solomun’s approaching set ecstatically. The roiling hook of “Dos Blokes” poured into the club. Like almost everybody present, I raised a hand in the air. While doing so, I dropped my notebook, then spent an uncomfortable minute crawling amid dancing feet to retrieve it. Solomun flashed a thin smile but hardly acknowledged the clamor. He was at work.

Ibiza, a gorgeous Spanish island in the Mediterranean, is forested with pines and fringed with dramatic coves. When Phoenician merchants first arrived, in the seventh century B.C., they named the island ’ ybsm , after Bes, the Egyptian god associated with music, dance, and sex. ’ Ybsm became Ibiza. In recent decades, it has been a destination for transgressive interlopers: beatniks, jazz fiends, artists, refugees, hippies, celebrities, yogis, ravers. Walter Benjamin , who spent time in Ibiza in the nineteen-thirties, made note of the inscription on the cathedral’s sundial: “ Ultima multis ,” or “The last day for many.” The sundial has since disintegrated, but its message could serve as a hedonist’s credo: Seize the night.

Clubs began attracting people to the island, which is about twice the size of Martha’s Vineyard, in the mid-twentieth century. According to “ Dope in the Age of Innocence ,” the Irish émigré Damien Enright’s vivid memoir about the counterculture era in Ibiza, jazz was then the hot sound. In 1961, Enright wrote, the island’s night life was fuelled by Benzedrine and alcohol, and centered on a bar named Domino, from which poured “the wildest, freest, most innovative music most of us had ever heard.”

In 1966, two brothers, Ricardo and Piti Urgell, established a night club called Pacha outside Barcelona. The name was suggested by Ricardo’s wife, who predicted that the club’s profits would allow him to “live like a pasha.” (Not long ago, the Urgells sold the Pacha Group to private-equity interests for three hundred and fifty million euros.) In 1973, the brothers opened an Ibiza outpost, and it became a melting pot where hippies hung out with film directors and pop stars danced with fishermen.

At the time, the prevailing music was disco, which was played largely using conventional instruments. Tracing the genesis of modern dance music, with its electronic beats and sounds, is like trying to find the center of a cloud, but most enthusiasts agree on certain milestones: Roland drum machines, David Mancuso’s Manhattan loft parties, Kraftwerk . In the early eighties, a group of Black Chicago d.j.s steeped in disco, R. & B., and synth-pop began playing locally produced dance music at parties. The Chicago sound had a strong 4/4 beat, a little bounce, and often soulful vocals, and it usually pulsed at about a hundred and twenty beats per minute. That was house music. An electronic-music scene also grew in Detroit, with harder, sparser tracks that often lacked vocals. That was techno.

House spread faster. “ Last Night a DJ Saved My Life ,” an authoritative history of the disk jockey, by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, tells of a single record purchase that transformed Ibiza. In 1985, DJ Alfredo, an Argentinean who played at a giant Ibiza night club called Amnesia, bought from an American dealer his first house record: “ Donnie ,” a single by the It. The track was spare but passionate, and Alfredo fell in love. At Amnesia, he began mixing the new house sounds with disco, flamenco, and other genres. Many dancers augmented the music with Ecstasy—a synthetic drug that had recently arrived on the island, and which promoted powerful fellow-feeling.

In 1987, several British d.j.s on vacation—Danny Rampling, Paul Oakenfold, Johnny Walker, and Nicky Holloway—took pills and listened to Alfredo at Amnesia. They became evangelists for house music, and have been widely credited with bringing it to Britain. (The “Ibiza Four” were important, but the story discounts many other bridges built between disco and electronic music in Europe; for instance, d.j.s at the Hamburg gay club Front were playing house records at least two years before the Brits heard Alfredo.) The new genre both offered escape and demanded commitment. You spent hours dancing with sweaty strangers, in thrall to a series of records that flowed seamlessly into one another.

By the mid-nineties, many new night clubs had opened in Ibiza. Low-cost airlines made the island an affordable destination. If you loved electronic music, an Ibiza vacation soon became a non-negotiable part of the summer. For top d.j.s, it offered serious money—and a path to international notoriety. By the turn of the millennium, Oakenfold was playing concerts at Wembley Stadium.

In 2019, more than four million tourists visited Ibiza, which has a population of a hundred and fifty thousand. Juan Miguel Costa, the head of Ibiza’s tourist board, told me that, though he hoped many visitors would discover the island’s beaches and restaurants, “Ibiza is very known because of electronic music—it’s something unique.”

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Mladen Solomun knew nothing of Ibiza until he was in his thirties. Born in Yugoslavia, he grew up in the Altona district of Hamburg, Germany. He described himself to me as a “street kid” who was crazy about soccer. At an early age, he learned to fight. His father worked in construction; his mother was a seamstress. Both were Bosnian Croats, and most of their neighbors were immigrants, too. In the family’s first Hamburg apartment, there was no shower—Solomun’s father had to build one—and their only German neighbor was a heroin addict. Another neighbor, an alcoholic, beat his wife; Solomun remembers listening for noise, in case his family needed to intercede. Fotios Karamanidis, Solomun’s business partner, and his closest friend since childhood, recalls Altona as “a jungle.”

In the mid-eighties, when Solomun was around ten, the family moved to another rough area. Soon afterward, Solomun’s older cousin, who was twenty-two, dropped by with a gift: a cassette tape recorded at a local club where the cousin was friendly with the d.j. “I didn’t know anything about the music,” Solomun said. “I mean, it was disco shit. I didn’t understand it. But what I did understand was: this music is not on the radio. It made me curious.”

A local youth center held a disco night every Wednesday. When Solomun was fourteen, an adult at the center noticed that he was interested in learning how the turntables worked, and entrusted him with a small budget to buy records: R. & B., funk, hip-hop, soul. At these events, the boys were focussed mainly on chasing girls, and vice versa, but occasionally someone moved to the rhythm. Solomun saw each dancer as a victory: “I was, like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here, but something is happening.’ ”

Solomun eventually stopped playing disco night, but he continued collecting records. He had no thoughts of a career in music. He was good enough at soccer that the coach of Germany’s national youth team expressed interest, but Solomun said that he would play only for Yugoslavia. His family returned home every summer. In 1992, when Solomun was seventeen, war broke out in Bosnia, and his family’s tiny Hamburg apartment filled with relatives who were fleeing the conflict. Solomun wanted to go fight; his father told him not to be stupid.

Solomun describes the period that followed as lost years. (He won’t elaborate, except to say that he abandoned sports, music, and school.) When he was in his early twenties, his father dragged him “off the streets” to work on a construction crew. Solomun remembers sitting in a portable toilet on a building site, wondering if the rest of his life would involve mindless labor. He told himself, “I have to at least try to do something else.”

Fatih Akin, a film director who is two years older than Solomun, and who also grew up in Altona, had just released “Short Sharp Shock,” a gangland noir that drew comparisons to Martin Scorsese . Solomun was inspired—the movie proved that someone from his background could “follow their creativity.” He took entry-level jobs in the film industry, and within four years he’d learned enough to produce his own short—a chaotic crime caper. Meanwhile, he was falling deeper in love with electronic music. A friend had taken him to a warehouse party in Hamburg where the d.j. played techno, and the sound instantly hooked him.

At twenty-six, Solomun d.j.’d at another friend’s birthday party, in a fifth-floor apartment in Hamburg’s red-light district. He played funk, pop, hip-hop, house, techno. The music spilled out the open windows, initiating an impromptu street party. Everyone from tourists to sex workers started dancing. The experience was too much fun not to repeat. Solomun organized a ticketed party in an art gallery. A hundred and fifty people bought tickets; five hundred showed up. He eventually resolved to commit to music. With his paltry savings, he bought a cheap computer and asked a local hip-hop producer to help him learn digital-composition software. “I started from zero, no money,” he told me. “Sometimes I had five euros and had to decide—do I buy a pack of cigarettes or a kebab?”

Solomun began to play at small Hamburg venues, which paid a few hundred euros a gig. During this period, he met several people who remain his closest friends and advisers, including Daniel Schoeps, his manager. Within a few years, Solomun and these friends were running their own club in Hamburg, called ego , and had founded a record label, DIYnamic. Solomun’s first releases as a producer—including his sultry 2009 album, “ Dance Baby ”—made few waves outside Germany. The final track of “Dance Baby,” “ Story of My Life ,” is nine minutes long, and combines gritty sounds with a plaintive chord progression. It’s beautiful. Solomun says that he wrote the track in a state of “hypnosis” as his father was dying, of lung cancer, at the age of fifty-nine. Even now, when the strings enter on “Story of My Life,” Solomun finds himself in tears.

When he was in his mid-thirties, his music went international: a stately remix of Noir & Haze’s “ Around ” was one of the most successful dance tracks of 2011. That summer, he was offered a gig at El Corso, an Ibiza hotel. A “party island” seemed to him like a vision of Hell, but his partners in DIYnamic persuaded him to go. Solomun played at the club for a few hours, then spent the rest of the weekend exploring. He was overwhelmed by the pristine beaches and by the openness of the music scene. The following year, Solomun was playing sold-out parties at an Ibiza club named Sankey’s. Back then, he was still enamored of R. & B., and his specialty was what he called “slow house”: bass lines were funky and sensual; dancers swayed their hips rather than pumping their fists.

Around this time, Pacha was in turmoil. The Urgell brothers were making more than twenty million euros every summer, but they were outraged by the fees being demanded by the top d.j.s on their roster, including David Guetta and Swedish House Mafia. They also hated the music. In 2011, Ricardo Urgell lamented the “monotonous sound and volume” of the club scene, adding, “It’s bodies squeezed together, it’s a little masochistic. . . . The great defect of this music is that it has to be accompanied by drugs.”

The Urgells’ views appalled Pacha’s booker, a Brit named Danny Whittle, who revered house music and believed that the rise in d.j. fees was justified. There were now dozens of subgenres of house and techno, each with a devoted following. To outsiders, and sometimes even to fans, the differences among subgenres can seem infinitesimal. (Explaining the gap between, say, deep-house and tech-house can make one feel like Polonius offering Hamlet actors for “pastoral-comical,” “historical-pastoral,” “tragical-historical,” and “tragical-comical-historical-pastoral” plays.) But Whittle understood that clubbers were fiercely loyal to d.j.s whose tastes matched their own. As he saw it, a headliner was worth a fifth of an evening’s gross: if a night regularly made half a million euros, as some at Pacha did, the d.j. should be paid a hundred thousand euros. In 2012, the Urgells ordered Whittle to reduce d.j. salaries. Whittle quit, as did four of the club’s top d.j.s.

Pacha was suddenly desperate. Steve Hulme, who took over booking after Whittle resigned, began chasing Solomun for the 2013 season. Hulme felt that Solomun would thrive in Pacha’s Sunday slot. “It was the kind of music girls liked,” Hulme remembers. “There was just a vibe about him—there was a vibe about the label, the name Solomun was really cool.”

Hulme made Solomun’s team a “massive offer.” Solomun’s manager asked for “a little bit more.” A deal was struck. Solomun loathes talking about money, and he forbids associates to disclose his earnings. But a knowledgeable person who worked in Ibiza’s clubs told me that Pacha paid Solomun two million euros for twenty shows in the 2013 season. (The source noted that Solomun had to pay his +1 d.j.’s fee, and his own expenses.)

Solomun’s fame has grown dramatically since then, and he now commands much higher sums. He plays about a hundred shows a year. In the course of his career, he has surely earned tens of millions of dollars. Schoeps said that, although Solomun is rich, money has never been a significant motivation. When pandemic lockdowns ended, Solomun supported venues by playing shows for free. Unlike other d.j.s, Solomun has also declined all paid branding opportunities, which could have multiplied his wealth, because he preferred to be known only for music. Solomun told me, “I’m blessed that I don’t have to think about money now.” But, he emphasized, “I was happy before .”

Solomun’s +1 concept was risky, because it depended so heavily on his allure. He also insisted on redesigning Pacha’s main room, because, as he told me, “the feng shui wasn’t right.” The d.j. booth was near a balcony and faced both the dance floor and the V.I.P. area. Solomun wanted to play directly to people who had bought general-admission tickets, and with his back to the V.I.P.s. He asked for the booth to be moved to the center of the club. His contract additionally stipulated that he be the only d.j. allowed to make use of this arrangement, and so his bespoke booth was wheeled in on Sundays and wheeled out on Monday afternoons. “He wasn’t into the V.I.P.—it was a little bit of a slap on the wrist for them,” Hulme said. “But it turned out the V.I.P.s absolutely loved it, because they felt like they were in the booth with him.”

Solomun’s first season at Pacha made a small profit. By the second season, every Solomun+1 night was full. Plutocrats fought for space behind the d.j. booth. Hulme remembers selling a section of the V.I.P. area for fifty thousand euros to a group that left the club after two hours. The section was then resold. Hulme also recalls that celebrities, including the Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo, had to wait to enter the booth. “It became the toast of the town,” Hulme said. “Half the plus-ones, we’d never heard of. . . . It became very apparent that it was all about him.”

Why would anybody go to a club especially to listen to a d.j. playing other people’s records? Until my mid-thirties, this question confounded me. I enjoyed a wide variety of genres, but—apart from a mercifully brief jungle phase in high school—I hardly ever listened to dance music, which I experienced mostly through singles on the radio. It seemed facile to me—a manipulative sugar rush. Then, in 2017, my wife and I left our kids with their grandmother and visited Ibiza with friends. It was my first trip there. That Sunday, we went to Pacha for Solomun+1.

When Solomun began his set, I was transfixed. This was no sugar rush. I didn’t know any of the music, I didn’t even understand some of it, and there were stretches when I didn’t take much pleasure in what I was hearing. The music was presented as one long phrase, continually promising a resolution that never materialized—it was like being trapped inside a five-hour Bach fugue. But along the way there were moments of melodic grace, beguiling transitions, and a constant, bone-shaking beat. Oontz, oontz, oontz, oontz. The rest of my group went home at some point, but I stayed, befriending a contingent of sweaty Argentineans. We remained on the dance floor until 7 a.m . I emerged onto the sidewalk, astonished by the morning sunshine and tottering like a newborn foal—a convert.

After that, I dived into dance music, and my wife soon caught the bug, too. We raved in forests, in warehouses. We learned to mix and played at parties. These experiences were both therapeutic and regenerative. The memory of a single night out could sustain us through dark winter months of school commutes, work deadlines, even personal crises. I loved all the commingling stories in a night club—stories that seemed vivid in the moment but dissolved when the lights came on. Solomun also loved this drama, I later discovered. He said, of Berghain , the Berlin club, “There is no filmmaker, not even Tarantino, who could capture all the craziness in there. The eroticness!”

I’m forty-two. My kids are ten and seven. It’s a strange kind of midlife awakening, but I am clearly not alone. In the crowd at Pacha, there seem to be as many thirty- and fortysomethings as twentysomethings. I often spot people in their sixties. In 2013, when Edward Frenkel, a Berkeley professor of mathematics, was about the age that I am now, he became a fan of Solomun’s, and spent some nights in the d.j. booth at Pacha. “He never played the same way,” Frenkel recalled. “It took me some time to realize that he actually had a much stronger bond with his audience than most d.j.s did.” It wasn’t that Solomun gave listeners exactly what they wanted, Frenkel said—he simply knew “what channel of communication was open with this particular audience, and would operate along that channel.” A Solomun set, he told me, returns us “to that space we had as children, mesmerized by music, mesmerized by looking at the starry night sky.” He went on, “The function of the d.j. is to preside over the ceremony. He is the priest, or the shaman.”

The afternoon following his night with Gerd Janson at Pacha, Solomun texted me, “Morning :)” It was nearly five. He invited me to join him at a spa. Half an hour later, we were changing into swimsuits in the locker room of a five-star hotel, heading for a Finnish sauna and an ice bath. Solomun explained that his Monday visits to the spa were the most important part of his week: he sweated out the night before. He put on a robe and flip-flops, and walked upstairs at a regal pace, occasionally stopping to say hello to someone who’d recognized him. In the sauna, he put ice on the heater and drizzled the cubes with essential oils that he’d brought. Solomun swirled a towel above his head, to move the air, and we sat there, perspiring, as he reflected on the previous evening at Pacha. “Such a good party,” he said. “The vibe was so nice.” Endearingly, he pronounced “vibe” with a “w.”

Solomun isn’t a natural performer in the d.j. booth. “I don’t like attention,” he told me. “To be a d.j. is against who I am.” But, over the years, he has learned a few moves. Sometimes he solemnly rocks from foot to foot as he builds a set; when a beat drops, he greets it like a conductor bringing in the string section, or a gardener attacking a stubborn branch with hedge trimmers. At moments, he skips around the booth doing a semi-ironic, elbows-out dad dance. The previous night, he had been mostly in this playful mode.

In past years, a good night at Pacha would have been followed by an after-party. Schoeps claims that, in the summer of 2013, Solomun played thirty-six after-parties, including one after every Solomun+1 show. A Pacha set would blend into a Monday after-party, which might—after a few hours of sleep—flow into another ticketed party on Tuesday, at Sankey’s, lasting until Wednesday morning. Solomun was motivated to play for so long, he explained, because the end of a night felt a little like death. On his decks, the timer was always counting down to the end of a track. If he didn’t cue up another, the sound would simply stop—an unthinkable prospect when people were still dancing. “It’s never the last track,” he said. “It’s never over.”

Karamanidis, who has attended many of the after-parties, offered a public-service rationale: Solomun often felt guilty that regular clubbers had not only paid high prices for their tickets but had also been gouged on drinks. (A small carton of water costs nine euros at Pacha.) At the after-parties, which were often held in private villas, drinks and entry were free.

In Ibiza, such bacchanals are tolerated. Elsewhere, they can lead to problems. Several years ago, after a show in L.A., Solomun’s friend Filip Crvenkovic hosted him and another d.j. at his house in the Hollywood Hills for an after-party. It blazed for twenty hours. When police came for a fourth time, they warned Crvenkovic that if there were more complaints he risked going to jail. This message was communicated to Solomun, who said, “O.K.—two more tracks.”

Sometimes Solomun conducts a marathon set at a night club. In December, 2017, at Space Miami, he played for twenty-seven hours, despite having been booked for just four. How was this physically possible? He explained that he took bathroom breaks during longer tracks. People brought food. He drank water, tequila, ginger shots, and occasionally took small amounts of Ecstasy. He was in a “perfect flow.” Ravers came for the first night, left the club, slept, showered, ate, and then returned for the second night, to find Solomun still playing.

Such feats of endurance are rarer now. At forty-six, Solomun needs to be more mindful of his health. He receives frequent massages—what he calls “lazy yoga”—and he often plays tennis. (Solomun has a powerful game; when we played doubles this summer, he hit a forehand that left a welt on my wrist.) At the spa, we moved on to the ice bath. Solomun immersed himself immediately, but I was wary of a heart attack. “Don’t think about it—just do it,” he gently commanded.

Afterward, we lounged on daybeds. Solomun noted that in a few hours the German d.j. Koze was playing at DC10, the club by the airport, and suggested that we go there together. When Solomun was a fledgling d.j., he idolized Koze, an older man who had emerged from the same Hamburg scene. Although I love Koze’s music, I was so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open. But it’s hard saying no to Solomun. Several other exhausted friends, who’d also been at Pacha, were dragooned into attending as well. “It’s all for one and one for all,” Bor, the tour manager, told me. “If Mladen is going out, the whole crew is going out.”

At 10 p.m., Bor dropped us off at DC10. Koze was playing in an outdoor space called the Garden, and it took Solomun half an hour to reach the d.j. booth, because so many people wanted to talk to him, or shake his hand, or take a selfie with him. Taylor Swift couldn’t have created more of a stir.

Solomun listened to Koze from the crowded booth, alongside Rampa and &ME, who were d.j.’ing later that night. Solomun admired Koze’s set, particularly for how it met its audience: a crowd of people, many of whom had just arrived at the club, in the open air, before midnight. After a while, Solomun turned to me and said, “So good! It’s light, it’s bouncy.” This indicated that 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 instrument” 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 reacting only to his celebrity. Getting into the car, he seemed upset. “Coming here is ten times more stressful than playing my own night,” he said. “In Pacha, I’m protected .”

Solomun has rented the same elegant, 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 serious 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 Hamburg. He recently searched for a place in Lisbon, but he didn’t find anything that he wanted to buy. With his schedule, 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,” Solomun 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 living room. The interior was whitewashed in the ibicenco style. Takeout containers for Solomun—bought and delivered by Bor—were waiting on the coffee 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 angels had been arranged above a fireplace. After lighting the candle, Solomun addressed the altar, crossed himself, and walked away. I hadn’t known that he was religious. He showed me a photograph 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 Catholics in a majority-Muslim country. In Hamburg, he received his First Communion at the age of ten, but he rarely attended Mass. When he was twenty-three, despondent, and working construction, 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 example, he was to visit a local Spanish couple twice a week and let them talk about their life; he should not ask questions but simply absorb their stories. (It’s easy to imagine him doing this—unusually for a celebrity, he is an excellent listener.) After three months, Solomun took Communion again, and committed to being a “good person.”

It’s odd to think of someone who parties as hard as Solomun as a man of God. But faith, he says, “fills me up.” Many of Solomun’s closest associates are also religious. Karamanidis spent four months in a monastery in Greece, and came back, in Solomun’s words, a “shining person.” Schoeps, Solomun’s manager, is also a Christian, and sings sacred music in a choir; on a recent weekend, he was in Hamburg, singing bass in Mendelssohn’s oratorio “Elijah.” (The concert, Schoeps said, was full of “big fun.”)

Night clubs cater to base urges. At ego, in Hamburg—which Schoeps described to me as a “dark, sweaty, stinky rave club”—Solomun was troubled by the addled faces of the people dancing to his sets, particularly as the sun rose. (Ecstasy causes mouths to dry out and jaws to set.) Regardless of how Solomun himself got through the night, he questioned whether it violated his faith to lure people into such a profane environment. One day, he and Karamanidis went on a walk to discuss this unease. Karamanidis argued that music was itself a kind of miracle, and that there was no shame in uniting people through dancing. Schoeps explained to me that, from that point onward, Solomun saw d.j.’ing as having a “divine power.”

“Even if I’m not trying to make myself so important, I can’t ignore what I do,” Solomun said. “I touch people.”

In the living room, Solomun recalled numinous moments from recent performances. In January, he was in Mar del Plata, Argentina, playing an open-air set for a huge crowd. As dawn arrived, he said, he began speaking to clouds that threatened to block the sunrise. (“Move, clouds! Now!”) He cued up “ I Am Free ,” a euphoric track by his frequent collaborator Johannes Brecht, who is a classically trained multi-instrumentalist. As the first chords began, the clouds did move, and the sun appeared. Solomun felt goosebumps. He sat on a speaker, pointing his fingers at his temples. “God is my master,” the male voice on the track exclaimed. “Love is my master. . . . I am free!”

In mid-August, Solomun drove from his villa to Ibiza’s airport, where a seven-seater Cessna Citation VI jet was on the tarmac. Boarding with him were Bor, two pilots, and me. In the next three days, he would play in Sarajevo, in Istanbul, and back at Pacha. During the summer, Solomun flies only on private planes. He said that he had “planted so many trees . . . a forest” to assuage his carbon guilt, but it seemed unlikely that the planting could keep pace with the miles. On this flight, he carried with him a wheely suitcase and a bag filled with pillows, blankets, and clothespins. Solomun requires total darkness to sleep, and the ten minutes before he goes to bed are often spent pinning together curtains in his hotel room.

The plane took off right after we arrived at the airport. Solomun seems to barely notice the ease with which he now moves through the world. (On a trip to Ibiza this summer, I waited more than ninety minutes to clear security. After a flight with Solomun in August, the pilots apologized for making him a few minutes late because they’d had to fly around a storm.) He told me that he’d hardly slept the previous night, such were his nerves. Many of his relatives, including his mother, were attending the Sarajevo show. City authorities had invited Solomun to play on the balcony of the Ministry of Finance, above the Eternal Flame, a memorial built after the Second World War. Tito Street, the thoroughfare by the memorial, would be closed off to cars for several hours. There was no +1 on the bill. The pressure weighed on Solomun. He wasn’t sure how to start the set.

In the summer, Solomun spends at least two days a week in his villa, listening to new music sent to him by artists both established and unknown, and deciding which tracks to play—and which acts to sign to his label. He tries to follow only his taste. Idris Elba started d.j.’ing in Ibiza a few years ago, and sent DIYnamic one of his mixes, in the hope of garnering a +1 spot at Pacha. Solomun admires Elba’s acting, particularly in “The Wire” and “Luther,” but he did not enjoy Elba’s mix. He passed, politely.

Solomun often uses a plane trip to consider options for an upcoming performance, or to edit tracks. Over the Mediterranean, he opened his laptop, put in AirPods, and assembled perhaps twenty options for opening the Sarajevo gig. Occasionally, he pounded the air with his fist as he listened. I couldn’t hear the music, and these spasmodic outbursts sometimes made me flinch.

Solomun spent most of the flight fiddling with one track, which he will release in October on DIYnamic: “Yumi,” by the young French producer Notre Dame. The progression on “Yumi” walks a line between euphoria and melancholy. Solomun was enraptured by the track, and had finished many recent sets with it, but on the plane he wondered if he could better exploit the tension that Notre Dame builds in the first ninety seconds by extending one section. Solomun told me that he wanted to “find the right dose” of beauty. He made the edit, though he wouldn’t really know if the change worked until he played it live. Solomun saved the file, and put the USB stick in the Aristocats bag.

Solomun’s most famous set is one that he recorded for the video service Boiler Room, from Tulum, Mexico, in 2015. It’s been watched nearly sixty million times on YouTube. A Solomun set in 2022 bears little resemblance to the one in the video—it’s hard to believe it’s the same d.j. The seductive, languid Tulum sound has given way to a harder, faster experience. There are fewer opportunities to sway your hips when Solomun plays now.

During the pandemic, he began to favor grittier and more energetic music. When he resumed d.j.’ing, his sets reflected this change. Indeed, at some recent shows, Solomun has played as many as six tracks by Matt Guy—a producer from Nottingham who creates sledgehammer rave tracks like “Krupa” and “Party Starter.” Solomun’s support has transformed Guy’s career. In Europe, he is now played on mainstream radio. “I’ve always been a massive fan of Solomun,” Guy told me. “But never in a million years would I have expected him to play something like ‘Party Starter.’ ”

Solomun told me that he was simply broadening his outlook. “This year, I really dig and love this kind of nineties sound . . . breakbeat, a little bit trance-y, almost Robin S.-style, but in a fresh way,” he said. “But these days I love more and more styles, and it’s getting harder and harder to build bridges during the sets. For me, that’s the big challenge.”

The changes haven’t delighted everyone. On a message board, one clubber who attended Solomun+1 in 2022 complained of the “weird shit” he played; another declared that he was at “the end of the road” with Solomun. After Solomun played a rowdy set in London, a fan wrote on Instagram, “I love your music you really need to go back to your old stuff though!”

Solomun doesn’t read online comments and has social-media accounts only because they are necessary for work. He says he knows that, when you change your sound, “sometimes you’re losing people”—but this can be hard to gauge. Whenever he looks out from his booth, he sees a sea of happy ravers.

D.j. sets are often recorded, and the best retain a transporting quality. I have listened to Solomun’s Essential Mix , recorded at Pacha in 2016, dozens of times; it continues to surprise me. The moment when a cello enters on a Johannes Brecht track called “ Voix Grave ” is chilling and propulsive. (In an e-mail, Brecht described that passage, in which the cellist Nayon Han interacts with a constantly modulating digital arpeggio, as a human and a machine in dialogue with each other.) But a set cannot be designed as a future relic. It is a work of improvisation that succeeds or fails as it flows onto the dance floor. Solomun says that his job is to “create moments.” The evanescence is the thing.

Sam Houser, a co-creator of Grand Theft Auto and a founder of Rockstar Games, first listened to Solomun as a general-admission clubber in Pacha, several years ago. They are now friends, and—among other collaborations—Solomun is a character in the G.T.A. universe, whose sets you can listen to in a virtual club. (Solomun wasn’t paid for this; Schoeps described the arrangement as “a friendship thing.”) Houser told me that hearing Solomun live was “breathtaking,” adding, “Mladen has a unique way of taking control and leading the crowd into his vibe as he slowly and methodically builds the energy.”

Though Solomun concedes that some of his tastes have changed, he doesn’t think that his sound has become too hard-edged to enjoy. Wherever he plays, he considers the needs of the crowd. Pacha, for instance, is “a sexy club—you can’t play a techno set in Pacha.” In June, I went to an open-air venue in Ibiza called Destino, where Solomun played mostly light, melodic house at sundown. He wasn’t above playing something so surprising that it made people laugh. Midway through the set, he dropped the whiny nineties hip-hop track “Insane in the Brain,” by Cypress Hill. It was like pumping helium onto the dance floor.

Solomun told me that he craved variety when producing music, too. Last year, he released “ Nobody Is Not Loved ,” a smooth dance album whose influences—synth-pop, indie, R. & B.—belied the ferocity of most of his recent live output. This summer, Solomun played me a bossa-nova remix that he’d made of José González’s “ Swing ,” noting that it had made him as cheerful as any other work he’d done lately. “I like changes,” he explained. “I want to have fun. If I’m not having fun, I can’t transmit the happiness.”

In Sarajevo, more than twenty thousand people waited in the streets for Solomun’s show. Elections loom in Bosnia, and the country is politically fragile, as old hatreds are rekindled. The European Union Ambassador to Bosnia, Johann Sattler, who is encouraging talks among factions, had secured funds from the E.U. for Solomun to play. “Culture is a great unifier,” he told me. He knew nothing of Solomun’s music but did know that many people in Bosnia loved him.

Solomun was driven, with his mother and cousins, to the Ministry of Finance. Dressed in a black T-shirt with an image of the “Mona Lisa” on the back, he stepped onto the balcony. Noisy good will poured toward him. He raised his arms in acknowledgment and began manning his controls. It was just possible to see the back of the crowd on Tito Street. People waited to dance in their apartments, near open windows. Halfway up the street, where pedestrians were pressed tight, the traffic lights changed, pointlessly.

As Solomun stood at his decks, it seemed suddenly obvious how to begin: “Swing.” Soon afterward, he played the remix of “Drone Me Up, Flashy” that had beguiled him at DC10. It was as if Solomun were curating a musical experience entirely to delight me. Perhaps I had spent so much time in his company that my preferences had converged with his. And maybe this was a skill of good d.j.s—to wrestle your taste toward theirs.

Some tunes have recurred in almost every Solomun set this summer—tunes that he can’t get out of his head. Being in Solomun’s head is a valuable place to be. One track that he played in Sarajevo was “Como,” a dark banger that has not yet been released. It was produced by Disfreq—two Irish brothers, Joe and Cahir Kelly, who make unusual, acid-tinged techno using analog synthesizers, and who work out of a studio above a chip shop in their home town of Moville, County Donegal. Solomun started playing Disfreq’s music last year, during his South America tour. “You instantly get loads of respect as soon as he starts playing you,” Joe told me.

Many Disfreq tracks have now been signed to influential labels, including to DIYnamic. This summer, Joe went to Pacha on a Sunday. He was d.j.’ing at Amnesia the following night, but he wanted to witness Solomun+1—and, maybe, hear one of his own tracks. He stood near the front of the crowd and used Snapchat to display a message to Solomun, in text large enough that the d.j. could read it: “Hi Mladen, it’s Disfreq :)” Solomun saw the note, and had Bor bring Kelly to the booth. An hour later, Solomun played “Como.” He danced next to Kelly as the track shook the club . “One of the best nights of my life,” Kelly told me. “The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up.”

In Sarajevo, the intensity of the music increased as the hours dissolved. I joined the crowd. At the front, near metal barricades, young men and women were stomping the pavement. Solomun was due to finish playing at 2:30 a.m . At about two, when there seemed no prospect of his winding down, he asked Bor to request an extra hour from the city authorities, which they granted. Light rain began falling and a cheer went up. A canopy was erected over the decks. One man, a third of the way back in the crowd, lit a red flare. Suddenly, the gig had the intensity of a protest march.

Solomun pounded his fist in the air. He finished his set with the edit of “Yumi” he’d done on the plane. As it played, he realized that the extended opening was not as moving as the original version. “When you double it, the moment is gone ,” he declared. At 4 a.m., sharing burgers and fries with his mother and cousins in the Presidential suite of a Sarajevo hotel, Solomun said that he would remember the night of the red flare for the rest of his life.

Several hours later, Solomun flew to Istanbul and was driven straight to the venue for his show, on the Black Sea. He changed in a trailer. Starting at sunset, he played a four-and-a-half hour set for seven thousand ravers; at 1 a.m. , he began a five-hour after-party for six hundred people. The after-party room was so hot that dancers wrung sweat out of their shirts. Solomun continued playing until the crowd had dwindled to a hard-core contingent of fewer than a hundred people. Eventually, even he was forced to concede that the night was over. When he turned off the music, dozens of acolytes surrounded him, some to press on him a USB stick containing a demo. Finally, at around 6:30 a.m ., he left with a woman he knew from a previous visit to Istanbul. Their time together would necessarily be brief. The car to the airport arrived in ten hours.

Flying back to Ibiza, Solomun said that his mind was blank. The two consecutive parties had drained him of ideas and energy, yet he still had to play at Pacha in a few hours. High summer was always like this, he said. On New Year’s Day, 2020, a film-director friend had asked him about his wishes for the year ahead. Solomun replied, “A one-year break would be fantastic.” Two months later, the first COVID lockdowns arrived. He recognized that other people were suffering, but he was quietly grateful for the peace. He spent two summers in Ibiza, where he attended Mass in the cathedral on Sundays, and worked on his tennis game with a local coach. Unlike other d.j.s, he wasn’t streaming sets during lockdowns. He understood that d.j.s wanted to play such shows to support the dance community, or to connect with fans, but in Solomun’s view d.j. work was either live or meaningless. Last fall, as some clubs and festivals reopened, he decided to quit d.j.’ing altogether, then reconsidered.

“I can always close the door,” Solomun said. “I get joy from other stuff.” Financially, he was set. He wanted to write film scores, and had ideas for movie and television scripts. His role as a record-label boss was consuming. He had also invested heavily in two startup businesses, including a health app. Some days, he thought that it might be time for other d.j.s to have their turn in the limelight. But he had been excited by the hunger of audiences after the pandemic. “People party much harder—it’s much more intense, it’s crazy,” Solomun said. “The power of music, the happiness of the music. Sometimes what I get back is very hard to handle, but . . . it’s worth something.”

On the flight, Solomun closed his eyes for two hours, bundled up in blankets and cushions. When he awoke, the sky was darkening and the plane was descending. Solomun said that, whatever the excesses of the days and nights before, the feeling of getting closer to home always lifted his spirits. He was excited about his +1 for the evening, a relatively obscure d.j. from Northern Ireland called Cromby. Out the pilot’s window, dead ahead, I spotted Ibiza. In the dying light, it glowed amber and pink, like the last ember in a fire.

“Oh,” I said. “It’s the island!”

“ My island,” Solomun said. ♦

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After Half a Decade, Solomun Returns to Australia

• Local Shows

Photo Credit: ResidentAdvisor

Written By: Olivia Poglianich

Solomon, everyone’s favorite underground DJ from Bosnia, is currently on a massive world tour. He’s hopping around Europe all spring but not without making two stops Down Under first. On Friday the 13th he’s touching down in Sydney. It’ll be his first time playing in Australia in five years, and his first time headlining on the continent in nearly a decade. Since so many people are looking forward to the show, the organizers have decided to upgrade his performance so thousands of extra fans can dance to his deep house sounds at the Hordern Pavilion venue. 

The day after his show in Sydney, Solomun is playing at an undisclosed warehouse in Melbourne and then jetting off to Tokyo before venturing back over to Paris and Hamburg just before festival season kicks off in Mallorca this May.

With two residencies in Ibiza and one on in Vegas, a world tour to get through, his own label Diynamic, and a club that he’s co-founded in Hamburg to look after, Mladen Solomun is a busy and a globally renowned guy.

The show will be put on by Australia’s own T1000 and their last batch of tickets is almost sold out. Solomun’s Sydney show is set to begin at 8 pm and close at midnight, but he’s already committed to an after party at Home, where he’ll be on until 4 AM.

For anyone looking to catch up on Solomon’s hits, his latest share on Soundcloud was his annual Christmas in Bed mix.The atmospheric melodies are chill, just like Solomon and his description of the track, “Christmas is not only a holiday, but also a bridge; something that connects one person with the other. We all need to use these bridges and reach out to one another, to share our joy and our pain, to look past the differences and to realize that in the end we are all one.”

See below for his April tour dates or follow him on Facebook for the latest.

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Château de Chantilly | Chantilly, FRANCE

See you this weekend with Solomun, VTSS, Vincent Lemieux and more! 🍦🍍💿🍒

For Solomun, music isn’t just a tool to make people dance. Music is as diverse as life itself: many different shades, moments, and memories to be made. Music triggers emotions and vice versa, and this sort of interrelation – with Solomun representing the music and the audience emotions – is what casts the spell around his performances. His “Solomun +1” residency at Pacha Ibiza started in quite a laid-back fashion – with him doing his own thing, moving the DJ booth into the center of the club to be close to the people on the dancefloor instead of the usual high podium, and introducing a fairly unheard-of concept on the Island: a night together with only one friend. Since its commencement in 2013, “Solomun +1” has long become an Ibiza household name, with its “Solomun +LIVE” offshoot on the Island and +1 editions all over the world, be it Berlin, New York or Tulum. The same energy was what kicked off his music label Diynamic in 2006: A band of brothers with similar ideas, taste in music, and the volition to support each other. And, looking back, Diynamic turned out to be the stepping stone for many artists’ careers. All of this started somewhere small, but by being himself, an honest entertainer in the truest sense of the word, not a stage persona, Solomun came to be so incredibly sought after. He has proven that the music is more important than the place it’s played at, because his sets, remixes and productions are bringing people together. And always, he is sending the same message: “Nobody Is Not Loved.”

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Solomun - Cinquantenaire Open Air Brussels, BE 14:00-23:00

• Rose Ringed ,
• Deer Jade ,

Solomun (born Mladen Solomun: 1975 in Bosnia and Herzegovina), raised in Hamburg, has played a major role in redefining European House Music, with productions, remixes and stand-out DJ sets that take the very building blocks of House and sensitively reconstruct them: adding a fresh, ultramodern twist to the genre. A well-respected underground producer for a number of years, he regularly hits the top spot of readers’ polls in music industry magazines – confirming his measure in every important category. His stratospheric rise in popularity kicked off in 2012, after a legendary first season on Ibiza with his own label-inspired Diynamic Neon Nights at Sankeys. Here, he and his crew took up the challenge and initiated a take-over of what was becoming a clichéd scene. This first assault on the White Island brought Solomun his just-rewards in the shape of Best Producer title at the DJ Awards Ibiza and DJ of the Year from Mixmag Magazine. It follows that “Neon Nights” will continue at Sankeys again this summer, along with an own night every Sunday at Pacha/Ibiza “Solomun +1”.

Rose Ringed

Solomun is one of the most recognized DJ worldwide, known for his legendary underground electronic music. An indisputable name in the industry for his spellbinding sets that leave you entranced in the dance floor. We are glad to welcome the melodic mastermind one more year into our DJ booth for his long-standing residency since 2013.  

Upcoming Events of Solomun

Solomun at Exposition Park

Pre-Sale REgistration

Know before you go.

Solomun (6 Hour Extended Set) Nala Julia Sandstorm

Saturday, June 1, 2024 

Exposition Park Los Angeles

Doors at 4PM

Tickets Tickets will only be available via the DICE app.

Table Reservations are available, please email [email protected] to inquire. Framework is not liable for any fraudulent tickets sold on third party websites. DO NOT purchase tickets from unauthorized third parties. We will not service, authenticate, or support any tickets from an unauthorized third party. Scalped tickets may be void.   

IMPORTANT EVENT UPDATE: The venue for this event has been changed from Mandalay Generating Station, Oxnard to Exposition Park, Los Angeles and will proceed on its scheduled date of Saturday, June 1st, 2024.

We strongly encourage guests to arrive early and use rideshare services, as there will be several events running concurrently within Exposition Park. All roads entering the park after 8PM will be completely closed. 

Uber/Lyft Drop off & Pickup Address: 3763 S Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 

Vermont Avenue, North of Exposition Blvd., then follow posted signs for entry to the event on Bill Robertson Lane .

This is the Closest Rideshare area into and out of the venue.

NO PARKING AVAILABLE AT EXPOSITION PARK. LIMITED PARKING IS AVAILABLE AT THE BELOW LOTS: 

Flower Street Structure: 3701 S.FLOWER ST. LOS ANGELES CA,90007

Figueroa Street Structure: 3533 S.FLOWER ST. LOS ANGELES CA,90007  (Main Entrance- Figueroa Street Side)

Subsidiary lots not otherwise listed here are also available around the venue.

Metro Line Expo/Vermont Station Exit at Expo/Vermont Station, extremely close to the event entrance.

Identification

Only the following forms of identification will be accepted for entry:

• A valid driver's license or state-, territory-, or province-issued ID card from the US or Canada;
• A valid passport;
• A valid military ID from the US
• No photos or photocopies of identification will be accepted.

Re-Entry is not permitted under any circumstance

Cashless Event Only credit and debit cards will be accepted as payment throughout the venue.  Have questions? Email us at [email protected]  

Accessibility Framework is committed to ensuring individuals with disabilities are provided full and equal enjoyment at our events. If you have any questions about accessibility or need an accommodation, please send an email to [email protected]  

Consent to Film By entering the event, you hereby grant consent of the rights of your image, likeness, and sound of voice recorded on audio or video tape without payment or any other consideration.

THERE IS A CLEAR BAG POLICY IN EFFECT Only clear bags smaller than 12”x 6”x 12” and/or a small clutch (maximum size 4.5" x 6.5") are allowed inside the venue.

All persons and their belongings are subject to search prior to entry.

Prohibited Items

• Empty water bottles of any kind
• Totem Poles, Flags, Inflatables, Hula Hoops, Poi
• Weapons of ANY kind
• Illega l substances, including all cannabis products
• Outside food or beverages
• Skateboards, scooters, or personal motorized vehicles
• Glass or metal containers of any kind
• Selfie sticks
• Laser pointers
• Professional camera equipment (no detachable lenses, no tripods, big zooms, or commercial use rigs)
• Audio/video recording equipment (excluding mobile phones)
• Drones or hover cameras
• Shoes are required for entry

Bag/coat check will not be available

Lost & Found Please keep an eye on your personal belongings For lost and found inquiries, please check with the guest relations staff at the Framework merchandise booth or email [email protected] and a member of our team will get back to you as soon as possible.

Merchandise Framework merchandise will be available for purchase. Pop by our booth and say hello!

Food Trucks

Meat District Calle Sabor Gluten Free and Vegan options will be available.

Press Inquiries: [email protected] General Information/Accessibility: [email protected] Table Reservations: [email protected] Ticketing Support: https://dice.fm/contact

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Powerball entrants told to check their tickets as $150 million jackpot remains unclaimed

A lucky ticket-holder has won the entire $150 million Powerball jackpot, becoming Australia's biggest individual lottery winner.

Thursday night's winning entry was bought in Adelaide, South Australia, but the identity of the new multi-millionaire remains unknown as it was not registered to a player card or online account, according to operator The Lott.

The winning numbers were 18, 29, 34, 8, 4, 28 and 6, with a Powerball of 11.

The Lott spokesperson Khat Intrachai said she was eagerly waiting for the lucky winner to make contact and claim their prize.

"Someone has become Australia's biggest individual lottery winner and possibly doesn't know it yet," she said.

"Can you imagine unwittingly walking around with a ticket worth $150 million?"

The largest Powerball prize in Australia's history, worth $200 million, was claimed by two people in February.

Lottery officials are urging all South Australian residents or visitors who purchased an entry in Thursday night's draw to check their tickets. 

The Lott said lottery winners in South Australia have 12 months to claim their prize, before a process to claim the prize directly from the state government kicks in.

In addition to the $150 million division one winner, there were 4,433,211 winners across divisions two to nine in Thursday's game draw who collectively took home more than $89.3 million.

Astronomical odds of winning the jackpot

Mathematician and author Adam Spencer said the odds of winning the Powerball draw were one in 134 million.

That means a person has a greater chance of being hit by lightning than winning the division one prize. 

"First of all, you have to get seven correct out of 35," Mr Spencer said.

"That is a one in 6.8 million chance. If you get through that hoop, you then have a one in 20 chance of getting the final ball.

"The total odds are one in 134 million."

• X (formerly Twitter)

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Four financial advisers reveal what to do if you ever win the lottery or receive a surprise inheritance.

Winners come forward in record $200 million lottery

• Human Interest

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Usmnt star pulisic skips ac milan postseason tour of australia, share this article.

In a piece of good news for the U.S. men’s national team, Christian Pulisic was left off AC Milan’s squad for the club’s postseason trip to Australia.

Milan only just finished its season over the weekend, but the club will head out this week to face Roma in a friendly in Perth on Friday.

Most of Milan’s first-team players will make the trip, though Ismaël Bennacer and Rafael Leão weren’t part of the group heading Down Under.

Also missing out was Pulisic, who just wrapped up a career-best season that saw him record 15 goals and 11 assists.

Pulisic was reportedly left off due to commercial commitments. Based on an Instagram post, the USMNT star appeared to be back home in Pennsylvania on Monday.

The U.S. will convene in the Washington D.C. area later this week as it gets set to face Colombia in a friendly at Commanders Field on June 8. The team will then take on Brazil in Orlando on June 12 in its final tune-up ahead of the Copa América.

Another key member of the USMNT, Yunus Musah, was on Milan’s roster for the trip to Australia, and is set to be a late arrival into camp.

Pulisic sends heartfelt message to Pioli: 'You helped me find joy in the game again'

Pulisic wraps career-best season with ac milan assist in salernitana draw, three thoughts on usmnt roster ahead of copa america.

Follow all of Pro Soccer Wire's Americans Abroad coverage right here.

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Childish Gambino announces 'The New World Tour': See full list of dates

Childish Gambino, aka Donald Glover , has announced a world tour that will cover North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

The North American leg of the tour, called "The New World Tour," will feature 33 dates and will begin in Oklahoma City on Aug. 11. The final stop on the leg will be in Chicago on Oct. 3.

The European leg of the tour kicks off Oct. 31 in Lyon, France and ends Dec. 5 in Dublin, Ireland, and will feature 18 stops across the continent. The Australia and New Zealand portion kicks off on Jan. 28, 2025 and wraps up on Feb. 11, 2025.

Alongside the world tour, Gambino also surprised fans with the release of " Atavista ," a new version of his 2020 album " 3.15.20 ," which includes two new tracks, titled "Atavista" and "Human Sacrifice."

Here's a full list of dates for Gambino's "The New World Tour ," including ticket information.

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

'The New World Tour' North America 2024 dates

• Sun Aug 11 – Oklahoma City, OK – Paycom Center *  
• Mon Aug 12 – Kansas City, MO – T-Mobile Center *
• Wed Aug 14 – Milwaukee, WI – Fiserv Forum *
• Thu Aug 15 – Columbus, OH – Schottenstein Center *
• Sat Aug 17 – Detroit, MI – Little Caesars Arena *
• Sun Aug 18 – Toronto, ON – Scotiabank Arena *
• Tue Aug 20 – Pittsburgh, PA – PPG Paints Arena *
• Wed Aug 21 – Philadelphia, PA – Wells Fargo Center *
• Fri Aug 23 – Boston, MA – TD Garden *
• Sat Aug 24 – Uncasville, CT – Mohegan Sun Arena *
• Mon Aug 26 – Brooklyn, NY – Barclays Center *
• Tue Aug 27 – Brooklyn, NY – Barclays Center *   
• Thu Aug 29 – Washington, D.C. – Capital One Arena *
• Fri Aug 30 – Raleigh, NC – PNC Arena *
• Sun Sep 1 – Nashville, TN – Bridgestone Arena *
• Mon Sep 2 – Atlanta, GA – State Farm Arena *
• Wed Sep 4 – Tampa, FL – Amalie Arena *
• Thu Sep 5 – Sunrise, FL – Amerant Bank Arena *
• Sat Sep 7 – New Orleans, LA – Smoothie King Center *
• Sun Sep 8 – Houston, TX – Toyota Center *
• Tue Sep 10 – Austin, TX – Moody Center *
• Wed Sep 11 – Dallas, TX – American Airlines Center *
• Fri Sep 13 – Denver, CO – Ball Arena *
• Sat Sep 14 – Salt Lake City, UT – Delta Center *
• Mon Sep 16 – Phoenix, AZ – Footprint Center *
• Wed Sep 18 – Los Angeles, CA – Crypto.com Arena *
• Thu Sep 19 – Los Angeles, CA – Crypto.com Arena *                      
• Sat Sep 21 – San Francisco, CA – Chase Center *
• Mon Sep 23 – Vancouver, BC – Rogers Arena *
• Tue Sep 24 – Portland, OR – Moda Center *
• Wed Sep 25 – Seattle, WA – Climate Pledge Arena *
• Fri Sep 27 – Calgary, AB – Scotiabank Saddledome *
• Sun Sep 29 – Edmonton, AB – Rogers Place *
• Wed Oct 2 – St. Paul, MN – Xcel Energy Center *
• Thu Oct 3  – Chicago, IL – United Center *

'The New World Tour' Europe/UK 2024 dates

• Thu, Oct 31  –  Lyon, FR  –  LDLC Arena #
• Sat, Nov 2  –  Milan, IT  –  Unipol Forum #
• Mon, Nov 4  –  Cologne, DE  –  Lanxess Arena #
• Wed, Nov 6 – Hamburg, DE – Barclays Arena #
• Fri, Nov 8 – Oslo, NO – Oslo Spektrum #
• Sun, Nov 10 – Copenhagen, DK – Royal Arena #
• Tue, Nov 12 – Prague, CZ – O2 arena #
• Wed, Nov 13 – Berlin, DE – Uber Arena #
• Tue, Nov 19 – Paris, FR – Accor Arena #
• Thu, Nov 21 – Munich, DE – Olympiahalle #
• Sat, Nov 23 – Brussels, BE – ING Arena #
• Sun, Nov 24 – Amsterdam, NL – Ziggo Dome #
• Tue, Nov 26 – Manchester, UK – AO Arena #
• Thu, Nov 28 – Glasgow, UK  –  OVO Hydro #
• Sat, Nov 30 – London, UK – The O2 #
• Sun, Dec 1 – London, UK – The O2 #
• Tue, Dec 3 – Birmingham, UK – Utilita Arena #
• Thu, Dec 5 – Dublin, IE – 3Arena #

'The New World Tour' Australia 2025 dates

• Tue, Jan 28 – Auckland, NZ –Spark Arena #
• Sat, Feb 1 – Brisbane, QLD – Brisbane Entertainment Centre #
• Tue, Feb 4 – Sydney, NSW – Qudos Bank Arena #
• Wed, Feb 7 – Melbourne, VIC – Rod Laver Arena #
• Sat, Feb 11 – Perth, WA– RAC Arena #

Support key

• * with WILLOW
• # With Aamarae

Childish Gambino world tour ticket info

Tickets go on sale to the general public beginning Friday, May 17 at 10 a.m. local time at thenewworldtour.com . Fans can also sign up for early access to tickets via the artist presale for all tour dates at thenewworldtour.com.

American Express card members can purchase tickets before the general public for North American, Australian and select UK dates. Presale start and end times will vary by market.

Gabe Hauari is a national trending news reporter at USA TODAY. You can follow him on X  @GabeHauari  or email him at [email protected].

Newcastle 1 Tottenham Hotspur 1: Trippier’s withdrawal, penalties and no-context football in Australia

Newcastle United ’s controversial (and bizarre) post-season tour to Australia began with a penalty shootout victory over Tottenham Hotspur in front of a crowd of 78,419 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The exhibition match, which was a homecoming for Spurs head coach Ange Postecoglou, ended as a 1-1 draw.

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James Maddison intercepted a misdirected pass from Nick Pope to put Spurs ahead in the 31st minute before Alexander Isak equalised on the stroke of half-time, tapping in from five yards after goalkeeper Brandon Austin parried a low Jacob Murphy cross.

During the shootout, Mark Gillespie ’s save from Bryan Gil ’s opening penalty proved pivotal as Newcastle triumphed 5-4. Joe White , Ben Parkinson , Amadou Diallo and Garang Kuol all converted, before Harrison Ashby dispatched the decisive spot kick.

Here,  The Athletic ’s Chris Waugh analyses the key talking points.

Did Newcastle come through unscathed?

It seemed a matchday could not go by without Newcastle picking up at least one injury during their campaign of pain . The fear heading into this game was that further fitness problems could arise, yet the early signs are that Newcastle managed to get through it almost unscathed.

Joelinton did receive treatment during the first half, though he was fine to continue, while Bruno Guimaraes , Nick Pope, Isak et al appeared to escape any issues.

The one concern Kieran Trippier , who was replaced by Murphy in the 37th minute. It was a planned substitution but Trippier was sat on the bench with an ice pack on his ankle.

While he did not look to be in pain, Trippier’s fitness is of key concern to England manager Gareth Southgate given his dearth of options at full-back before Euro 2024. Trippier has started only one competitive match since March 2 due to a calf injury.

The 33-year-old admitted this month that the trip to Australia is “not ideal” because “it’s not like going to Benidorm round the corner. It’s 25 hours away”.

Perhaps it will prove to be just what he required for his match fitness, with Newcastle boss Eddie Howe confirming post-match that Trippier’s withdrawal was planned: “He is still in the early stages of recovery so we didn’t want to take risks with him. Half an hour was always the aim.”

Do Kuol’s Newcastle first-team hopes extend beyond this trip?

He was not signed by Howe, nor has he been anywhere close to playing under the head coach previously , yet Newcastle’s logic for taking Kuol on this trip was obvious.

The 19-year-old is arguably the most exciting Australian export over the past five years after joining Newcastle in January 2023 from Central Coast Mariners. But subsequent loans to Hearts in Scotland and Volendam in the Netherlands have not brought about the desired development.

At the MCG, Kuol was introduced in the 71st minute as a centre-forward, replacing Callum Wilson , who had only been playing since half-time after coming on for Isak at the break.

Kuol cut a solitary figure, barely receiving any decent service as Spurs dominated second-half possession. He did, however, dispatch his penalty expertly to the goalkeeper’s right in the shootout, putting Newcastle 4-3 up.

The big question is whether, beyond this trip, Kuol will represent Newcastle’s first team again. He was a Dan Ashworth -led addition and Howe does not consider the five-cap Australia international to be anywhere close to being first-team ready, so there is a chance Kuol could be sold.

At least Kuol did pull on the famous black and white stripes, and in his native country, though there may not be many — if any — further opportunities to do so beyond this tour.

Was this trip really worth it for Newcastle?

The term ‘exhibition match’ perfectly encapsulates this fixture.

Everyone who played was incredibly professional and there was a competitive edge to proceedings, highlighted by Son Heung-min ’s vociferous appeals for a penalty when he ran into Trippier, and by Newcastle’s defenders protesting with the officials when Maddison’s opener was allowed to stand, despite an apparent handball during the build-up.

For those Newcastle and Spurs fans based in Australia, this was a memorable experience, and the black-and-white Wor Flags display before kick-off added to the sense of occasion.

Yet this was a clear example of no-context football.

Unlike pre-season friendlies, which feature tactical experimentation, are used as a fitness exercise and are evidently building towards the upcoming campaign, there was little tangible for either club to take out of this. The visibly jet-lagged players struggled to inject any intensity into proceedings, while the second half saw a flurry of substitutions from both sides.

For Newcastle, following an exhausting, injury-ravaged campaign, it is hard to argue that the benefits of this trip exceed the potential negatives.

Newcastle have received a fee but it is not in the millions, and is believed to be significantly less than Spurs’ remuneration. It will not transform their compliance with the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) and has largely been a commercial exercise to increase exposure in Australasia.

Graeme Jones, the assistant head coach, Stephen Purches, the first-team coach, and Howe — the latter seemingly begrudgingly so, given his expression in the photos — even visited the set of Neighbours before this match, suggesting at least part of the rationale beyond the trip was not football-related.

On set with @neighbours ! 🎬😎 pic.twitter.com/peNwhMHrrK — Newcastle United FC (@NUFC) May 22, 2024

What’s more, Howe’s men also have another match to follow against the A-League All Stars to follow on Friday. Ludicrously, their interminable season goes on, albeit in a thoroughly non-competitive fashion.

(Top photo: Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)

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