Review of Despacio #19 @ FTI Gent, Wintercircus, Ghent, Belgium (March 16-17, 2024)

Summary

Ghent, Belgium hosted Despacio’s 19th show, marking the first time the world’s best dance party appeared in the home country of Stephen and David Dewaele, making this show a homecoming of sorts. 3manydjs played wonderful set lists both nights, John Klett’s wizardry conquered the acoustically challenging environment of the architectural marvel that is Wintercircus, and Arf & Yes’s Jonas Weyn’s light show was the best Despacio has seen to date. The attendees were a more mixed bag: Saturday’s overdressed VIP crowd struggled with the idea of “dance party,” but on Sunday the true ones showed them how to move.

Quick background context

James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem) and 2manydjs Voltron’d up back in 2013 to create the perfect Balearic dance experience consisting of a John Klett-designed 100,000-watt sound system (66,000 watts of it powered by McIntosh audio) arrayed in seven towering speaker stacks. The DJs play for six hours straight, spinning rare vinyl tunes you won’t hear on any streaming service in a range of 90 to 130 beats per minute. Dramatic lighting from Arf & Yes is the cherry on top — alternately cloaking dancers in darkness and surprising them with otherworldly lightscapes.

This combination of masterfully mixed music plus hi-fi audio plus lights results in Despacio being the best dance party on earth.

Despacio has occurred 19 times since its 2013 debut, and its 19th show in Ghent, Belgium was — no exaggeration — one for the Despacio history books: it took place in the most architecturally spectacular space Despacio has ever graced; it featured a lighting rig about twice as large and complex as any prior Despacio; it featured songs specific to the Belgium “scene”; and the dance floor ended up being both the one of the worst and the one of the best that Despacio has ever seen. We’ll dive into all of that here in a moment.

But first — before you read on, you need to pick one of the fan-favorite tracks played at Despacio Ghent as your soundtrack to accompany this article:

• Mr. Bump Man (Theo Parrish re-edit) by Jackey Beavers
• Naive Melody by the Talking Heads,
• Hold On (Extended Mix) by Stephane Severac
• Capy (aka Music Love Song by Capone) remixed by Manncool & Trol2000
• Freaks Only by Black Meteoric Star
• Justify My Love (Q Sound Mix) by Madonna
• Secret in the Dark by Monika
• Da Funk by Daft Punk
• You Should be Dancing (Todd Terje re-edit) by the Bee Gees
• Sensitive Child (Soulwax Remix) by Oliver Sim
• You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) (Soulwax for Despacio Remix) by Sylvester
• Like an Eagle (Todd Terje re-edit) by Dennis Parker
• I Can’t Go for That by Hall & Oates
• Underwater by Harry Thumann
• Situation (Dub Version) by Yazoo
  
  Go ahead, open one up in a new tab, then continue reading once you’ve DJ’d up the right vibes for the long read ahead.

Every Despacio has its stories and this one was no different. In this post, I’ll share a mix of stories that I witnessed and that the Despacio fan community who hang out at reddit.com/despacio and discord.gg/despacio witnessed.

01. It took seven years of effort to bring Despacio to Ghent

David and Stephen Dewaele were born in Ghent, raised in Ghent, and are sons of a Ghent DJ and radio personality. Bringing the Despacio project they cofounded with James Murphy home to Ghent was a dream they’ve nurtured for the better part of the decade that Despacio has been in operation. “We have been lobbying for this for seven years,” they told the press. Regional press and hype prior to the event was considerable — with plenty of press coverage accompanying the announcement of ticket sales, which sold out within minutes:

“If you turn up the speakers, they blow the windows out of the building. Literally.” — Nieuwsblad

“Sound fetishists and dance enthusiasts, … take note: on March 16 and 17, 2024, the Ghent Winter Circus will open its doors for Despacio…. A first for Belgium, and what a first!” — Humo

“Belgian fans of 2manydjs and Soulwax have been hungry for a home match since the start of Despacio in 2013, triggered by the rave reviews of his foreign shows.” — DeMorgen

“James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem) and the two Dewaele brothers are bringing their famous DESPACIO to the Winter Circus.” IndieStyle

According to Jules Gahide, one of the team building Wintercircus, bringing Despacio to Ghent was a major undertaking. “This took seven years of lobbying, if not more. In terms of size, logistics and cost, it cannot be underestimated,” he told Nieuwsblad, and that’s after a prior attempt to bring Despacio to Ghent failed for fear that the sound system might damage priceless works of art.

Bringing Despacio to Ghent “was obviously not possible with ticket sales alone,” Gahide said. “We can achieve this thanks to Flemish subsidies and because we spread the costs over the entire festival. This includes lectures, an exhibition and a restaurant with chef Olly Ceulenaere [of Publiek fame]. That combination makes it feasible.”

Most attendees paid around €55 for their tickets, plus fees, but without government subsidies this event would have needed to charge several times that price to break even.

The high-profile nature of Despacio’s return to Ghent, and the need for the event to make nice with folks including public officials, technology executives, local residents, and representatives and stakeholders of the Flanders Technology & Innovation government initiative, meant that tickets were allocated to a rather diverse group of folks who might not normally attend a Balearic dance party, and this had some interesting repercussions for the experience, especially on Saturday, the first night of Despacio.

02. Was Despacio “Parels voor de zwijnen” / pearls before swine?

With such strong pre-event hype driving ticket sales, and with a politically necessary comp ticket program, it’s inevitable that some attendees stepped into the room without understanding that Despacio is a shrine to dance.

The title for this section is taken from an excellent review written by Mattias Goossens in the De Standaard, who summarized the situation nicely, “The audience present could be roughly divided into three categories. The devout Despacio fans who could already be recognized in the queue at four o’clock in the afternoon by their colorful clothing and who spoke a mixture of Spanish, German, English and French, the music lovers with a respectable band shirt who wanted to experience the sound system in person, and lastly, the unfortunately loud visitors who regarded the dance floor as a glorified reception.”

We’ll say more about the impact this third group had on the dance floor in the next section. But before we go there, I want to discuss one downside of bringing such a diverse crowd to Despacio. I personally think it awesome when new folks are exposed to Despacio, but it’s not for everyone, and expectation-setting is really important. When someone has a free pass shoved into their hand and attends out of professional obligation, the experience can backfire.

As an example of this, one journalist given a free press pass to the event complained about not getting free pizza. She also deeply misunderstood the music, claiming that records played were “mainly” “a lot of monotonous beats.” Perhaps the lack of free pizza was so infuriating that she couldn’t really hear the music? Let’s talk facts. Here’s the setlist for Despacio Ghent. Anybody who understands anything about music cannot credibly claim that this list is “mainly” “a lot of monotonous beats.” I will personally print and eat this entire blog post if any legitimate music critic can defend the journalist’s assertions.

There was one instructive factual inaccuracy in the article. The author wrote that VIPs had attended FTI Gent conference keynotes then rolled into Despacio. This claim is false, as all of the conference keynote events weren’t scheduled until the days after Despacio had closed its two-day run — so literally nobody could have attended a conference keynote prior to Despacio. But in this untruth there is an important truth: many of Saturday’s attendees certainly behaved as if they’d rolled out of a keynote and into a cocktail & wine reception, so while the author’s grasp on the truth is weak, her impression of the situation was accurate.

So let’s talk about the impact of the “unfortunately loud visitors who regarded the dance floor as a glorified reception.”

03. On Saturday, the dance floor was crowded with dark matter

In the misguided journalist’s defense, she was writing about her experience sampling the Saturday experience alone. Saturday’s crowd did was indeed strangely overdressed for a dance party — they appeared to be dressed for work or attendance at a tech conference. Many attendees wore their winter layers: coats, suits, ties, and business attire one might wear during casual Friday at an investment bank. Some of this was a result of the fact that the cloak room’s was a logistical mess early in the evening, so many folks decided to skip the line and head straight upstairs to Despacio.

But the cloakroom wasn’t the only problem. Saturday tickets, which sold out within minutes, were perhaps over-allocated to a group of folks who had to be invited for political and public relations reasons. As noted above, the effort required to bring Despacio to Ghent required seven years of lobbying effort. What’s more, Wintercircus abuts residential areas, and so all of the local residents received invitations to the event. And then of course there were the conference speakers, organizers, VIPs, and handlers. In short, of the approximately 1,600 tickets for Saturday’s event, many weren’t regulars at dance clubs or music festivals. As one journalist succinctly put it, Despacio on Saturday felt like “a networking event where some fans were also allowed in.” As a fan of Despacio that traveled from California to Ghent, I can say that’s exactly how it felt to me.

This “business networking event” vibe was certainly visible in attendees’ dress, but was most pronounced when it came to the their behavior. At times, especially in the first half of the night, more than half of the attendees stood in the exact middle of the room under the giant disco ball and talked over the music while drinking. They didn’t dance. They didn’t listen to the music. They simply stood, drank, and talked for hours in their warm winter wear. They likely enjoyed this experience, but they didn’t experience Despacio.

One member of the fan community who did dance and was trying to lend her energy to the room nailed it when she wrote,

“To be in the dead center and just stand there feels off to me. It felt like some folks weren’t reading the room — if someone’s going wild next to you, and your response is to be a hard shoulder/cold look instead of joining them or giving them some space to move, that’s a bummer to me.”

— djpepperazi

Another comment unfavorably compared the Despacio Saturday crowd to the attendees at Despacio Coachella or Despacio iiipoints, “Many people came dressed for work on Monday. Festival crowds suck in some ways but they do come prepared to party. Many Despacio virgins last night didn’t know dancing was something you do while under the ball.”

On Saturday, about halfway through the night, the DJs played “The Safety Dance (2manydjs Edit)” by Men Without Hats and when the first stanza broke in, there was a certain sad irony to the fact that the non-dancing friends the lyrics warn against had somehow snuck in to the “place they will never find”:

We can dance if we want to
We can leave your friends behind
‘Cause your friends don’t dance
And if they don’t dance
Well, they’re no friends of mine

Say, we can go where we want to
A place where they will never find
And we can act like we come
From out of this world
Leave the real one far behind

When Despacio shows up at a music festival, only music lovers show up. Including flights, hotels, tickets, and intoxicants, the average festival attendee has spent several thousand dollars just to see and enjoy music, and the folks who don’t love music have been left far, far behind. This results in a dance floor that writhes, jumps, shakes, bounces, nods, gyrates, and in general gets wild. Oftentimes, professional dance crews from live acts spend some time in Despacio as well, resulting in an absolutely killer dance floor vibe. Dance is what Despacio’s about, and dance, for the most part, didn’t happen a lot in the first half of Saturday’s event.

The Saturday crowd did not get wild, though to be fair there were pockets of folks trying their best to get down, and towards the end of the night, once the room had been sufficiently infused with alcohol from the slow-moving bar, and once the reception attendees had gone home for the evening, there was more dancing than not.

Part of what might have been going on is that when Despacio is done in a smallish town, people can fluently read each other’s social class and all kinds of information about each other. The social order of the town is carried onto the dance floor, and so the norms of the town are present in the party space. At a festival, by contrast, everyone comes from far away and everyone is an immigrant to the space — providing much more of a melting pot effect, where the boundaries between people and groups are less strong and more fluid. People are by default more open to new relationships and more curious about each other, and because they’re not at home, their home-based inhibitions are left behind. Sometimes this backfires — there’s a lot more boorish behavior at festivals, it’s true.

Take a look at the photo below, taken Saturday night — this photo is taken during a peak moment when the ball has been lit with a fantastic blast of light from 79 MegaPointe moving heads arrayed in three rings around the central fixture. Count the number of hands in the air that aren’t standing still holding cell phones, and you get a sense of how little the Saturday crowd really danced. To be fair, counting “hands up in the air” as a proxy for dance floor heat is an inexact form of Dancefloorology, but as you’ll see in later photos, there were certainly more folks moving with their hands in the air on Sunday.

Some more quotes from the community regarding the Saturday experience follow:

“First three hours lots of people standing around as if waiting for the party to start. My advice: “You ARE the party!”

“I didn’t mind the crowd really. Despacio is a very special experience, not your run-of-the-mill club night. [This event] attracted a lot of people that were just “curious,” so it took two to three hours for the thing to become a true party, but i didn’t mind really, everybody was respectful. A lot of people talking as if they were in a bar sometimes, but that didn’t bother me.”

“From the outside it looked like the crowd was barely moving for the first three hours. I figured it just took a while for all the drinking to kick in and the tempo to go above a certain level.”

“I personally find it hard to understand why someone would be so keen to stand in the center of the hall and then stand completely still surrounded by dancing people, while talking to their friends about this and that without paying any attention to the music.”

“It took a while to get the party started but I didn’t mind per se. It was fun to see that most boring people actually got to dancing at some point.”

“I think a massive thing with Despacio is preparation. Whether that be touching up on your track / lyric knowledge, reading reviews and stories or simply just getting to know what Despacio is and what it stands for. I believe that for a lot of people; especially the Ghent locals, had nothing but the newspapers to do that for them, if they didn’t dive deeper into it themselves. So in that case, for a lot of people, Despacio was this “lo and behold, one of a kind club night” brought to you by 2manydjs and LCD Soundsystem. That sounds very enticing, but quite frankly Despacio is not enticing to / made for everyone.”

“I spent maybe a total of 10 mins in the centre.. hard to tell, but wasn’t very long. It was very crowded, and crowded with people who weren’t REALLY dancing the way you’d expect centre people to, which was disappointing.”

As the night wore on, “there were lots of coat piles throughout the room as people who didn’t expect to dance found themselves caught up in the moment and moving. Movement made them warm, they shed layers, and they joined the dance. Kudos to these folks for joining the event.”

“I think it was also a case of hype and fomo: when Despacio Ghent was announced a couple of months ago it was hyped a lot in the local press. ‘the best soundsystem in the world’, ‘something you’ve never experienced before’, ‘so exclusive and expensive they only have done it a few times in the last 10 years and never before in Belgium’ etc., etc. Hence it sold out in a minute and everyone and their uncle felt like they could not miss this. And then they get there and it’s dark and slow for the first couple of hours, not really ‘greatest hits’. Of course [we fans] know what the deal is with Despacio. We know you really have to get into it to enjoy, we love the edits, the quirky songs, recognize our favorite Despacio tracks, and cheer when we hear them. If you didn’t do your research and thought you paid 55 Euros for a full-out dance party I guess you might get disappointed. Dave, Steph and James are not crowd pleasers, they do their thing and that’s what we like about it. But if you want to get quick euphoric thrills, you’re better of at Tomorrowland’s main stage.” (link)

04. Sunday’s dance floor was Despacio-level epic

Sunday was another story entirely. One of the best Despacio nights ever happened because the crowd that showed up brought the right energy and attention.

At one point, I saw a tall man dancing energetically nearby. I was also dancing energetically. We locked eyes, gave each other a little nod because we recognized in each other that each had come to dance. A minute later, he leaned over and said something in Dutch. I shook my head to indicate that I didn’t understand. He repeated himself. I shook my head again and replied, “Sorry! English?”

He took a moment to think about what to say, and in halting English shouted, “JUST. GET. ALL THE WAY. INTO IT!”

That’s the attitude that many of us brought to day two of Despacio after discussing the situation in the Despacio Discord. Those of us who had flown from far away did not want to see another night of lackluster dancing, so as we were discussing what was off with Saturday, we made a vague plan to band together and bring our party to the center of the room. By holding the center and giving the dance floor our best, we figured we might somehow inspire others and perhaps even amplify the energy of others.

The night was a huge success, but not because of our efforts. We did bring our A-game, we did dance our hearts out, and we did do our best to re-assert a norm of moving to the music, but we were just a few dozen or so international fans out of a floor that held 1,000 or more people at any one time. What really made the difference (and this is conjecture) is that the prior night’s politically necessary free ticket recipients hadn’t been gifted a second night. Sunday tickets had been sold (not given away) to a completely different group of people, almost all of them drawn to Despacio out of desire to attend the legendary dance party. I don’t know the numbers, but I’m guessing purely based on feel alone that about half of Saturday’s tickets were allocated to VIPs (including politicians, tech industry persons of note, and nearby residents), whereas Sunday’s allocation felt like maybe 10% had been allocated to non-dancers.

The results were night-and-day, as some of the subsequent stories in this review will make clear. One of my own favorite memories from the evening happened during a Despacio-specific Soulwax remix of Cliche. In the center, a man was swinging his scarf or sweater around in the air, and it was hitting everyone near him, but they didn’t mind because they were all jumping with abandon, hands flying into the air like city pigeons scattering before a rampaging toddler. During a peak moment in the song, someone’s hand smashed into my face, pushing my sunglasses down sideways into my nose and cheek, causing me to briefly see stars, and causing a small cut that bled just enough to let a trickle of blood reach my lips. I didn’t see who did it, and I didn’t even care. I knew it wasn’t personal, and I was happy that someone had lost themselves enough to be so careless. I just pushed my bent sunglasses glasses back up and kept dancing because there was no pain, only joy.

And now, some quotes from the community regarding Sunday night:

“[My favorite part of the night was] the sound system. I have experienced Pink Floyd sound system in 1994, twice (yeah I am that old). Until this week-end, it was the best sound system I ever heard. Now Despacio is on par with that. And it’s quite something, believe me!”

“Wauw, what a completely different day than yesterday – loved again every second of it, Despacio is truly happiness.”

“Sunday was a more up-for-it crowd for sure.”

“The last hour of Sunday was just next level!”

“If they could distill that mix of “Cliche” into a liquid form, I’d inject that into my veins. It’s an incredible pick-me-up for a flagging old me and got me dancing like night one.”

“There were also two awesome light moments during the night, one where it looked like the Ball was firing a laser beam all around and one where everything was purple and neon green!”

“The third hour [was] when the dancing really took off, even further away from the circle, with the first time the disco ball was completely lit during Like An Eagle.”

“[My favorite was] the grand finale, although you could also consider that to be the final three hours (everything from Jungle Boogie, their Whatever Tomorrow and Cliché remix, until the speakers almost almost blew everyone away during Numbers.”

“Sunday there was a section of the setlist that was banger after banger. It was completely non-stop. They played “Nighttime In the Switching Yard,” “Mindless Boogie,” and “Cliche (Soulwax Remix)”. “Walk the Night” was another brain-melter. Everyone around me in the crowd lost their minds–we were all throwing our hands up for each “Hey!” especially towards the end when it escalates. I kept joking that if they kept playing favorite songs of mine I might have a heart attack, that I was dangerously too happy.”

“Despite all skepticism, it is impossible not to return home ecstatic. It suddenly makes less sense that people from all over the world are flying after the sound system. Despacio is also a poisoned gift in that way: it sets the standard for what music can sound like and what a club night can be unreasonably high. That bassline from Queen will haunt me for a long time.” wrote journalist Mattias Goossens for De Standaard.

05. Da Funk in Da Spacio

[Video from instagram.com/glenjamn]

One truth of Despacio is that the DJs love to play with the crowd. There was a moment where the DJs extended the break of Daft Punk’s mega French House hit Da Funk with ducked volume to build anticipation for the drop. During this moment, there’s nearly 40 seconds silence with barely audible Daft Punk in the background while the crowd begged for the drop with hoots, whistles, screams, and cheers. When the drop finally arrived, the crowd erupted into a frenzy of dance. One community member called this moment — “the acid drop after the blackout” — one of their favorite moments of the entire two-day circus within the Wintercircus.

Earlier, during the same song, the crowd had spontaneously decided to sing along to this song that has no lyrics, and so they began chanting and singing the iconic distorted guitar melody — it felt like being in a sports stadium full of rowdy football (soccer) fans. For me, a frenzied crowd singing the chorus of a song that has no lyrics was the most European-feeling moment of the weekend. I have personally attended a total of 67 hours of Despacio across 15 nights and have never heard a Despacio crowd sing together like this.

“The sound of the crowd singing Daft Punk’s “Da Funk,” brought a big smile across my face,” wrote a member of the Despacio Discord community.

Another community member wrote: “[A favorite moment of mine was] Da Funk. The sound, the lights, and everyone going wild to this. Made me think for a moment like I was at a Daft Punk set (which is also something I would’ve loved to experience), and everyone heard this song for the first time again and were so excited that they HAD to sing along.”

And another wrote, “[One of my favorites was] the build-up to Da Funk, first slowly paced in the complete dark, until the impressive lighting and the disco ball turned blue and the crowd started chanting the melody.”

06. The Secret in the Dark

Despite what you might see if you review the #despacioishappiness hashtag on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube (where the videos are full of fully-lit mirror ball action) at Despacio, the room is fairly dark 70% of the time. The lighting, done by Arf & Yes’s brilliant Jonas Weyn, is kept low-key for a few reasons. First, darkness foregrounds everyone’s sense of hearing, allowing the music coming from those hulking speaker towers to speak without distraction. It’s an effect that’s similar to those restaurants that were trendy eight years ago where diners ate in total darkness to heighten diners’ sense of taste and smell. Second, Despacio’s darkness provides a sense of safety and intimacy. You needn’t worry that your dance moves look goofy if nobody can see you; darkness provides cover for letting loose. Third, darkness provides contrast so that the big moments stand out like mountains on a plain.

All of that is why, when 3manyDJs play Monika’s Secret in the Dark, the song has special significance to Despacio. As with many songs played, it can be read on multiple levels. There’s the allusion to the darkness of the experience, the secrets that folks bring to the dance floor, the secrets that are made on the dance floor as people get intimate with each other, and even to the feeling of isolation when you’re totally lost in a frothing sea of churning dancers.

But Secret in the Dark works on another level, thanks to the incredible story behind the song. While miles offshore on a boat in the Aegean Sea with companions, Monika’s boat experienced a catastrophic explosion that set the boat on fire. “Monika and a male companion swam nearly eight hours in the windy night, fixated on the glowing lights of the city ashore,” according to The Fader. She temporarily lost her eyesight due to the exposure she endured during that eight-hour crucible.

This song was for community member Padsushi the number one song she hoped to hear at Despacio, and that she had traveled far to hear. She wrote, “I love this song for so many reasons. In addition to the great story behind it, “the original production itself nails the disco vibe so well you could think it was produced in the late 70’s. The Soulwax Remix, however, emphasizes the dance floor vibe so much, with a longer progression, loud bass line and extra congas. This remix makes me very nostalgic of the 2×2 shows [2manydjs] did back in 2016, which are filled with gems they often play at Despacio or other places. [This was] a time when I discovered music styles I didn’t even know existed, and it changed my life for the better.”

Like Padsushi, most of the community had a song or songs that they were waiting to hear — their own secrets in the dark, their own hidden light behind their faces. When one of us heard someone’s song coming up, the group converged to give them either the space or the support they needed.

For DJPepperazi, her song was Sunday’s finale: “[My favorite track was] Numbers into Computer World as the finale of Sunday evening. That song transition, I believe, is truly one of the finest moments in music. From a sparse, mechanical, robotic track about numbers, to a melodic explosion of melancholy notes, so recognizable and moving. When the shift happened, the big light show we’d all been watching for two days went dark and only a single disco ball was lit, the tiny one in the DJ booth. Somehow they light it just right so that it bounces long rays of light across the entire crowd. It’s disorienting and beautiful and sobering and makes you suddenly aware that you’ve been enjoying an incredible dance party manned by three actual people, masters of their craft who make the limitations of physical media seem simple.”

DJ Cheers had been waiting for the Soulwax remix of Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).” He wrote, “Ever since I first heard the Soulwax remix of this track, I have been playing it out to club crowds, party crowds and sharing it with friends. It is truly an amazing example of a remix that stays so close to the source material, yet gives a whole new feel to the track! …. I truly believe that Despacio is the one and only sound-system / set-up that can and does do the remix justice. It got to what I believe was the last hour of the night, and I recognised that the track was being mixed in. There had been a few “light ups” at this point, so I was wondering how they’d do the track justice… It turns out, it doesn’t need different lighting to stand out from the others. The music itself does the talking, and it does it so well. It is truly a track that was built from the ground up FOR Despacio, and you can feel it. It was an amazing moment for me, which was years in the making. 3manydjs did the remix so proud in Ghent, and I’m positive that Sylvester, alongside every angel that we lost to AIDS over 40 years ago, were absolutely dancing their hearts out last weekend.”

One of the great joys of Despacio is combing through the historical track lists and finding the gems that you hope to hear, and then (of course, and ideally) hearing those records played. Given that you’ll hear 8-13 records played per hour, there’s always a chance that “your song” is just around the corner, but as a live experience we of course have no control over what’s played next, and no real ability to hear again the same music with the same level of fidelity because, for most of us mere mortals, our home and car stereo systems are nowhere near Despacio’s seven-figure budget. So what’s heard at Despacio tends to stay at Despacio, ensuring that its secrets remain literally and figuratively locked away in the dark … until the next Despacio.

07. The Reddit / Discord Community Story

The modern Despacio community started organizing around the Despacio subreddit in 2022 and grew tremendously due to Despacio’s post-pandemic return to This Ain’t No Picnic (August 2022) and Coachella (April 2023). As the community grew, it expanded into Discord and Whatsapp, giving the small but mighty crew of core followers a place to work together on track identification, appreciation, and mutual support.

So of course when we got together, and we took some photos. Here’s the Saturday group:

And here’s Sunday’s expanded group, once we’d had more time to find each other:

Some folks brought and wore special swag to the event — Deewee t-shirts, Soulwax shirts, a one-of-one t-shirt that read “Ghent is Happiness,” disco ball socks, disco ball earrings, a large fan emblazoned with “Big Despacio Fan,” and so on. To a person, everyone brought an excellent attitude and an openness to meeting fans of Despacio from around the world for the first time.

Wrote one, “[A favorite moment for me was] meeting some of you guys. I’m not very active in the community, but I recognized some of you underneath the big sparkling star from your Discord profile pictures and I’m glad I came over to say hello. Amazing vibe! …. I think I’m also on the younger side and not many of my friends know about [Despacio]. Loved to meet and see people who also have this Despacio/2manydjs/Soulwax/DEEWEE passion!”

Wrote another, “Getting to meet and be around people who are as passionate and also so much more passionate about music than me. The fact I’m pretty young compared to the usual Despacio crowd means that most of my mates have no interest / no idea of Despacio, and what a club experience can really be. It’s really enlightened me to begin to work with people / create ideas that can just maybe bring a tiny taste of that feeling to my city.”

08. Episode 20 of the ongoing “Get Off the Speakers” story:

We again heard a new and tweaked version of a track that’s been in the works now for six or seven years. We don’t know when or if this one will be released, but every time we hear it, we feel like we’ve glimpsed a Yeti or the Loch Ness Monster. Here’s what I previously wrote about this track, pasted here for context:

Imagine you’re dancing to a fine groove (Ferrara’s Love Attack (1979) and the DJ gets on the house mic, ducks the music, and tells people to clear out of his area and stop climbing on the speakers. “Will you people please get off the speakers? Get down off them speakers.” You look around but you can’t see anybody on the speakers.

Another 30 seconds goes by, and the DJ’s back on the mic, frustration in his voice: “Will you people please get offa the speakers? I’m tired of asking you nicely.”

The DJ plays a bit more of the dance groove, then cuts back in, taking the music all the way down so that he can be heard loud and clear: “I’m not gonna ask you no goddamned more. I don’t want to see nobody dancin’ on top of my shit unless I say so.”

If you’re me, the first time I heard this track (at Despacio #15 in 2022), I looked around the room wondering what kind of idiot would dare profane the beautiful Despacio speaker stacks by climbing on them. I was just inebriated enough to believe for a minute that the DJs were losing their cool and asking people to keep off the equipment, an illusion aided by the way they cut everything but the mid-range frequencies so that the DJ’s voice feels like it’s really a live announcement happening right there in the room. It’s a tremendous bit of trickster magic.

I’ve since learned that the Dewaele brothers have been working on this remix for six or more years, according to the healthily obsessed fans on the Soulwax Discord. We might’ve heard the near-final version of it at Coachella ’23. Who knows if we’ll ever see a release of it.

09. The Bar Story: “Bar is even slower than the BPM”

Lest I sound like the “journalist” who complained about not getting free pizza, I don’t want to spend too much time discussing the bar situation (I don’t even drink at Despacio), but it must be mentioned that the bar was very slow. “Bar is even slower than the BPM” quipped one member of the Discord community. This was probably the single most frequent complaint about the event overall. “The bar was horrible. Everyone agrees,” wrote one person, whom nobody disagreed with. Bar prices were reasonable (to this Californian, anyways) at €4 for beer, €5 for an IPA, €9 for alcohol, and €14 for cocktails.

10. The Last Dance

This last story is hard to write, but I feel it’s important to share because it says something about Despacio. On day two, I noticed a large gap in the crowd nearby, which was strange because I was standing in the center of the room and the room was packed except for this empty space. It didn’t make sense to have a large open space — people always moved to fill such voids, but then I adjusted my sightline (and checked my privilege) and saw that a woman, perhaps 40 or 50 years of age, sat in a wheelchair that was being slowly and carefully wheeled to the center of the room.

Wheelchairs at Despacio aren’t a strange or unwelcome sight. Coachella’s successful accessibility program means that wheelchair users are a frequent sight at that venue and one of my favorite dancers from 2023 did his thing from a seated position.

What was different in this case is that the seated woman occasionally stood up with assistance and appeared to be having long heart-to-heart talks with different people on the dance floor. First one woman, then another, then another bowed her head into intimate conversation with the woman in the chair, and I saw tears. These periods of standing were broken by longer periods of sitting, and the standing crowd became more comfortable, closing in on the wheelchair and dancing around it in a way that was still respectful but less fearful.

At one point, I happened to turn around just in time to catch the woman before she fell to the floor — I didn’t see what had happened prior to that moment, but Sunday’s dance floor was fairly wild, especially in the middle, so I’m guessing that her chair had been jostled while she was in the process of sitting or standing. I felt shocked at her lightness — she seemed to weigh less than my nine-year-old child, whom I pick up regularly.

Dancing next to her made me feel a mix of emotions — from awe at her strength and determination and stamina (she was there for hours), to guilt at how I took for granted how easy and natural it is for me (and most of us) to stand and dance, to resolve as I promised myself to dance until I could dance no more and to do what I could to take care of my one body. I also felt fear for the woman’s safety as the dance floor occasionally took on the vibe of a mosh pit. And finally, I felt gratitude that I was able to share this experience with so many positive people from all stages and ages of life.

I don’t know any more than this about the woman in the chair, and so I can’t share more than what I saw, but I felt compelled to share this story because it spoke to me. I hope to attend Despacio until my dying day, and if that means at some point that I’m going to have to ask a loved one to wheel my failing body out under the disco ball for one last dance, that’s what we’re going to have to do.

To be clear, I don’t know that this was the woman’s last dance. I certainly hope it was not. I hope that she has a long life ahead of her and that my morbid thoughts are the product of an overactive imagination. I cannot know, and want to be careful about not making assumptions, which is why I wrote above only the facts that I observed and of the feelings I felt.

She was there through the close of the second night, and as the disco ball shone its last rays upon our upturned faces, the scene reminded me of the beauty and fragility of life, and I felt that Despacio was a metaphor for the life-giving star that nurtures the growth of everything on earth, a metaphor driven home by the closing number of a Despacio-specific version of the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun.”

All of this reminded me of the famous Dylan Thomas poem, which I’ll share here in closing:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

From The Poems of Dylan Thomas, published by New Directions. Copyright © 1952