The Secret DJ on Ibiza: "Fuck all that heritage nonsense"

Mixmag’s regular columnist, The Secret DJ, has a book out. In it, while remaining carefully anonymous, he offers us windows onto his decades of globe-trotting decadence. A well-known DJ-producer, he rose to prominence via his involvement with a band and built a global career, particularly focusing on Ibiza. The Secret DJ is full of acerbic asides about the state of dance music, the state of society and, indeed, the state of humanity itself, but it also details its writer’s catastrophic fall and dark times. It’s quite a read. Mixmag caught up with him and dismally failed to trick him into revealing his identity.

You talk a lot about your use and abuse of various drugs in the book. Are you now ‘straight edge’?

Actually, if you look carefully I do a lot less than everyone else in it. One of the reasons I included some colourful characters was ’cause I’m a bit boring. I have a few peers who are born-again straight, and very hard on themselves and people around them. I get it. It’s about self-preservation. I’m fine about it, but I’d be lying if I said I was straight edge. I’m a moderate person now, not a maniac. As for anyone else, I don’t know. Do what you like. You can’t tell anyone else anything, they have to find out for themselves.

Other than you and your characterful speed freak tour manager, the other regularly appearing character in the book is hedonist promoter Quag Allurgie. Is he a composite character, or based entirely on someone real?

They’re all composites in the sense that I’ve had a few tour managers, so we rolled them all up into one. There are a few colourful promoters out there who we all know. Again, a couple are rolled into Quag. The events are all real things that happened. Sometimes I’ve had to squeeze the cast in terms of who was there. Obviously they have dominating features that will make you think “Oh, that’s definitely so-and-so”, but only up to a point. I think people will read this in very different ways, depending on their perspective. Industry people will see it as a guessing game. There’s no avoiding that. Some may actually be looking for advice, mad as that sounds. For 90 per cent of readers it will just be an adventure story.

Towards the end of the book you make DJing sound like eternal cycles in a new level of hell. How are you feeling about it today, right this second?

At the peak of the game it is very much an endurance test. The events in the latter half of the book were a particularly bad time, and my circumstances were very much reduced in lots of ways. It’s a cautionary tale in that respect. I think there are definitely elements of DJing that are hellish, especially my being trapped in a cycle of parochial travel, drugs and illness. But that was a different time, and unusually tough. Things have improved immensely since then. I wouldn’t swap it. I think if you’re deadly serious about what you do there are testing times when most people give up and get proper jobs. I know I’m a DJ ’til I die ’cause I was presented with oblivion and chose to stay being a DJ even though it meant having nothing. It was character-building, too. I was definitely a rampant ego who needed a large reality sandwich!

Do you have a favourite club in Ibiza, extant or defunct?

The best Ibiza club was called Extasis. It was just as you drive into San An and was the 1980s labour of love of a mad audiophile Frenchman. Looked like the Star Wars cantina and sounded like a Dolby presentation. Seemed to open and close at random. I suppose that sounds quite cool, but if you’d seen it you’d realise it wasn’t.

I don’t subscribe to the things-ain’t-what-they used-to-be brigade. I like to be involved in the now. Fuck all that heritage nonsense! Gives me the juddering fear, dude.

What is the strangest place you’ve ever woken up?

Ooh, there’s been a few. I woke up in a helicopter once with no idea how I got there. Inside a huge bass bin at a festival; I was cold and the vibrations felt a bit like heat. Fell asleep at an afterparty in east London once and when I woke up it was a full-on bondage joint. At the peak of touring, waking up at home used to be very odd sometimes. I used to reach for my own landline expecting room service to answer! [laughs] That’s quite glam, isn’t it? If not totally deranged.

What was the last album you listened to, end-to-end?

Nils Frahm’s ‘All Melody’ – which is a massive lie, by the way, ’cause it also contains rhythm. I listened to all of it as it simply demands it. I’m a big fan of the pianist Glenn Gould, and a lot of the way it’s recorded reminds me of his lo-fi approach. I also listened to the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack recently; it has the same kind of completeness. So does ‘Transformer’ by Lou Reed. Or ‘Screamadelica’. Daniel Avery’s new joint has it too.

Would we know any of the music you’ve made?

In various guises I’ve been very underground and very mainstream. Been on telly and everything. Since I’ve lived abroad in Ibiza I’ve done lots of things under pseudonyms, which isn’t unusual for electronic music. Frankly most of my career I’ve hidden behind constructs, so none of this secret nonsense is very new to me. I’m not giving you any more than that, you tinker.

What are future plans for The Secret DJ?

There’s going to be a series of immersive theatre events. The DJ will be secret. It might be me, might be one of my ‘name’ DJ mates. It will be pitch-black, like a ghost train. It will be very easy for me to be secret if I’m not there [laughs]. We have to recreate what raves were originally like by stealth: you knew nothing, couldn’t see much, music was everything, didn’t even know where the DJ was, never mind who. So yeah, big plans. Ultimately it’s not about me. The Secret DJ can be anybody.

The Secret DJ's book The Secret DJ is out via Faber & Faber on June 21. Buy it here

Find more stories from The Secret DJ here