10 iconic Solomun moments

You don’t have to venture deep into the Internet to find a video of Solomun having a boogie. Part of the guy’s trademark style is his fluid and laidback grooving. A little flick of the wrist here, a fist pump there, he always appears cool, calm and collected in the booth but with the endearing sway of slight intoxication. In the video above however, free of the constraints of decks, we see Solomun soar. The big man is the centre of attention with his matador-style dance moves. And it’s all there; the stamina, the control, the panache (we saw that little skip at the start). Continue to dance like no one is watching, Mladen.

At 6’3” with an athletic frame, Solomun was quite the footballer and still rates Dutch footballer Ruud Gullit as one of his all-time inspirations. When he was a teenager he was even offered a place in the Germany’s national under-16 team but turned them down because he felt such a strong affinity with his country of birth, then-Yugoslavia. Subsequently he ditched sports altogether, telling us in 2012: “Many, many years later I understood that decision. Everything I do, I do one hundred per cent. I have to stand behind it. I don’t compromise. If I don’t have fun or my heart is not pumping, I can’t do it.”

As already mentioned, Solomun doesn’t seem like the guy who gets his feathers ruffled easily. But there is one man that makes him succumb to nerves, his childhood hero Sven Väth. In 2015, the duo made a bet: they’d both play each others’ club nights in Ibiza that season. For Solomun this meant playing at Cocoon and for Vath, he went b2b with the big man at his +1 night. Held at Pacha, the Solomun+1 nights have become must-see events with the DJ going b2b with guests like Dixon, Paul Kalkbrenner and Âme. But for Väth it was something else.

Is Solomun house music's king of YouTube? It certainly seems like it with 48 million streams of this monster from 2011. The beauty of the track lies in its simplicity. A haunting pad, bumping bassline, stripped back drums and understated vocal are the only ingredients in the tune, but Solomun weaves them together to create a sultry, funk-fuelled dancefloor workout.

Did you know that Solomun's first love was actually film? While working on a building site in East Germany he had an epiphany about his creative future: "It was about 11 o'clock in the evening and I was in the toilet, alone, having a shit. It was the end of a fourteen-hour day, I was very tired and I started to think about life and I drifted away for 20 minutes. Then I thought, what the fuck am I doing here? This can't be my future, there has to be more."

Anyway, this song is dope and so is the video.

It was so bloody hot when Solomun took the stage at last year's Kappa Futurfestival. Having reached nearly 40 degrees during the day, it was in the late 20s as Solomun began his set and a fire engine was still employed to the side of the crowd, keeping ravers hydrated with its hose. But dressed in his trademark all-black and sunglasses, Solomun remained cool going a little harder than usual and rolling out belter after belter to an ecstatic, 30,000-strong crowd. Luckily for you we got it all on camera *smug face emoji*.

You know you’re big deal when you’ve got your own lookalike. Not that Ben Fhurst is going around as Solomun's professional stand-in, but at least the option is always there. Fhurst is an Australian DJ living in Ibiza and told Pulse Radio last year that he can't go out for a night without being asked for a selfie, bought a drink or asked if he's the Diynamic boss. Sometimes when he's even at a Solomun gig.

But when asked if he ever takes advantage, Fhurst comes across as a down to earth guy: "I’m very committed and serious about my own DJing, I don’t want to be known as that DJ that impersonates Solomun. So as much as my mates egg me on to pretend to be him to blag stuff, I just don’t want to be that guy."

Founded by Solomun and Adrian Tolio in 2006, Diynamic (get it? DIY-namic?) has gone on to become one of the world's leading dance music labels. Its back catalogue is a close-knit family of artists that include Stimming, H.O.S.H, Thyladomid, David August and Adriatique whose tracks like 'Radar', 'Rollox', 'Steppenwolf' and 'Forever' have become staples on dancefloors. All of them rep each others' tunes and all of them party together. Just the way it should be.

Louis is Mixmag's Digital Intern. Follow him on Twitter here

Check out the dates for Solomun's newly announced + Live events here and his + 1 events at Pacha here