Chloé Caillet is the electronic-punk powerhouse lifting dancefloors to euphoria

At the top of the '80s, amid an existential crisis, Tony Pike hopped off a Spanish ferry and made an indelible mark on Ibiza's history. He dug out the pool that would skyrocket him to stardom with a pickaxe—working without running water, no telephones, laying tiles for his now-iconic dancefloor by the flicker of an oil lamp or moonlight - praying for the party to arrive.

With blood, sweat, and passion, Tony's handmade paradise 'Pikes' became the backdrop of the music video for Wham's hit 'Club Tropicana' (featuring Tony as barman) and a haven for rock icons such as Grace Jones, Spandau Ballet, Led Zeppelin, Bon Jovi, Boy George, Kylie Minoguw, Julio Iglesias and Freddie Mercury, whose name is now given to the indoor club space. More than just glitz and celeb debauchery, Pikes was a cultural touchstone for free love and self-expression where dancers from all walks of life gathered to get into the groove. Season after season, barriers of status, sexuality, age and race dissolved while Tony topped up drinks beaming his infamous mantra, “Smile! You're at Pikes.”

Four decades later, Chloé Caillet is electrifying Pikes with the debut of her inclusive rave Smiile, transporting the global underground to the island of Ibiza and chanelling the loved-up energy of its heyday. A curated collective of pioneering queer selectors play from sundown poolside to sunrise at Freddie's. Each artist bridges past, present and future sounds while Chloé cements her prowess as a progressive tastemaker and veteran partier.

Both multidisciplinary Vancouver artist Regularfantasy and Chilean duo Aerobica make their Ibiza debut, setting a feverish opening pace for ADONIS resident Nyra to follow. The party builds to a sweat-soaked climax courtesy of Melbourne DJ/producer Jennifer Loveless, Brooklyn's Gabrielle Kwarteng, Berghain/Panorama Bar resident Roi Perez, and ISAbella, co-founder of Barcelona’s celebrated LGBTQ+ collective MARICAS.

Hearts sync to the bass. Bodies move like the night will never end. An eclectic mix of ’90s locals connect with new-gen ravers, avant-garde creatives, highly styled folks on psychedelics, and international go-go dancers. Hot off the heels of hosting her first headline event, Chloé dances like crazy in front of the booth for Octo Octa until the lights go up.

Amid Ibiza's rapid influx of VIP culture – velvet ropes, kneecapping prices and bottle service fuelling a dancefloor disconnect - the island's queer history could be at threat of extinction. Thankfully, Caillet's Smiile is one of a few beacons of hope that hark back to Pike's halcyon days of hedonism. A community-focused rave utopia — free of charge.

Chloé hollars out "goodnight" as she's whisked away by a sea of friends with mega-watt grins. She has every reason to celebrate. In less than half a decade, she’s had a meteoric trajectory some DJs and producers grapple with their entire careers to achieve. She’s played Panorama Bar, B2B sets with Bradley Zero and Jamie xx, the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games Closing Ceremony, the Met Gala after party, soundtracked catwalks for Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu, Burberry and took Smiile on a world tour. Since summer 2024 alone, she added Primavera Sound, Lost Village, Homobloc at The Warehouse Project to her existing list of renowned stages alongside Burning Man, Glastonbury, Coachella, ADE, Awakenings, Sónar, and Madison Square Garden. Not only that, she crafted the euphoric EP ‘Here to Make You Smile’ on her own imprint, and is bringing a liberating, punk rock attitude when dancers need it most.

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The second time we meet, several months after our first encounter at Pikes, I'm driving down a winding dirt road to her house and studio nestled in the pine trees of Santa Eulalia on Ibiza’s eastern coast. Chloé is waiting on the porch to meet me in faded jeans, a Whitney Houston T-shirt with her beloved wolf-like dog Cosmo and two ginger cats.

Palo santo smoke swirls up to a tangerine sky as we sit down on Moroccan cushions to watch the sunset. I'm transfixed by her warmth and grounded energy. She offers me mosquito spray, waxes poetic about her sprawling synth collection, and pours cups of ginger and lemon tea. I press record, and with no superstar ego, Chloé dives into the blood, sweat and passion that shaped her sonic destiny.

Chloé Caillet was born to command a dancefloor. Raised in Paris and downtown New York, nightclub bred. “I've loved music since the day I entered the world. I came out of my mom's stomach singing and by the time I was five years old I knew who I wanted to be. I was a punk kid, a proper rock head who wanted to be a rock star,” she says.

Chloé was brought up on a rich diet of sounds and global flavours. As a child she belted out songs on a karaoke machine while her family spoke French, English, Spanish, Italian, and her grandma cooked Moroccan food. She was introduced to classical and jazz records from her mother and psychedelic rock, punk and percussion via her father. “My parents split up when I was pretty young, but I would still see my dad on the weekends, and he would take me to Central Park to dance. All these old school, ’90s, New York hippies were drumming in circles, and he'd let me go loose,” she recalls.

Chloé began studying classical piano at the New York Conservatory of Music aged seven despite her burning desire to play guitar. “My mom was like, ‘If you're gonna play piano, you gotta play classical. You can start there’,” she explains. “I'm discovering now that I have a bit of ADHD, so classical piano was quite complex and challenging. I'd learnt to sight-read, and then, around nine years old, I started practising jazz, blues and playing film scores with a different teacher at my house. He quickly realised I had near-perfect pitch; he'd show me a piece, and I'd be able to play it back almost instantly. That's how I really learned to play piano—and when I fell in love with it.”

She moved to Paris at age 11 and began songwriting and gigging. “I started writing 1960s psychedelic blues and rock music. At 15, I started my own band,” she says. “I was a proper rebel. I defied every sense of authority. I was not showing up at school. I was going out every night to rock concerts or a club called Le Triptyque that hosted Battle of the Bands. I was in Paris during the rise of the Ed Banger scene, so I hung out at places like Social Club and Concrete. Those parties led me to Romanian minimal and progressive house. Man, I didn't even want to go to high school; I just wanted to play music!"

“My parents were hippies, but they didn't come from that world and had no clue how to handle me,” Chloé continues. “They can see now how happy music made me and that it was the one thing that got me out of my head and kept me grounded. They realised how it got me through a lot of difficult times in my teenage years. But for a while, they were pissed!”

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At age 16, Chloé got kicked out of school and her mum's house. Her dad enrolled her in boarding school in Bristol… but six months later, she got expelled from there. “I was grounded for the rest of the year. I was home every day, all day, with no phone or computer. So that's when I really dived deeper into music. I taught myself guitar and started two more bands.”

Chloé played in a progressive alt-rock group called the New Androids and an ’80s cover band while adding bass and synth to her expanding repertoire. She finished high school in Bristol, studied jazz piano and got an A-Level in music production. She also became a regular raver at Lakota and Motion where she fell in love with dubstep, breakbeat, and drum 'n' bass.

“At 18 years old, I went to Glastonbury and felt so free. I just never wanted to let go of that sensation. That experience is still one of the main reasons I'm doing what I'm doing today,” Chloé says. She packed her bags and returned to New York more determined than ever to carve out a future in music. Simultaneously holding down an A&R internship at Republic Records, and completing a music business degree at NYU, Chloé utilised her skills as a natural-born hustler to rise up Brooklyn and Manhattan's vibrant scenes.

"My first ‘official nightlife job’ was doing doors at the Soho Grand Hotel, in the club room, at the Tribeca Grand Hotel, and then at Le Baron. They were rock and roll, very exclusive, you couldn't buy tickets. Yet here I was, 19 or 20 years old, super underage, but deciding who went inside! It was lit, I got all my friends in. It was such a great time!” she exclaims.

Chloé was gaining traction in underground circles and the industry. “My parents had pushed me into business because they didn't want me to be fully immersed in the creative side, so I thought, why not try ‘music business’?” she laughs. “At 21, after graduation, I got offered a job at Lava Records. I was in the building! I was working in the creative department, flying out to LA to find tracks for our roster. I was styling artists and giving ideas for music videos. But something didn't resonate.”

Labels felt distant, and she wanted to be closer to the artists, so she tried management. “I worked alongside Nicolás Jaar and a bunch of super, super cool artists. I learned so much about the band world and how expensive it is to tour with one. But that wasn't for me either— I once booked flights for a group for the wrong year! If I hadn't quit, I'd probably have been fired!" she smirks behind jet-black curls. Eventually, Chloé launched her own agency, providing creative direction for hip hop artists, and started doing musical direction for hotels, curating parties, booking DJs at clubs, programming playlists, and making music.

“I played in a band again called Neon Legion, and off the back of that started another one, which I wrote a lot of music for, but left because I had an altercation with the lead singer,” she declares “I always had a foot in rock and a foot in electronic.”

On top of the above, she was doing the door at Bronx warehouse parties from 4:AM to 11:AM. “We hosted some amazing events with LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture, The Kills and all these bands at the forefront of an electronic/rock crossover, which proved to me there was a way to mix the two worlds I loved. I had also collected records my whole life, and deep down, I knew I wanted to be an artist,” she shares.

Chloés friends persuaded her to book herself as the warm-up DJ for all her acts and pick up an extra couple hundred a week. After a couple lessons at a mate’s house, she got her first gig at Soho House. “I played a lot of rare disco. One of the first records I put on was a Greg Wilson edit called ‘Secret Sunday Lover’. After that night, as soon as a few people were in a room, I'd always put that on to get it going.”

Those opening sets quickly opened doors to her wildest dreams. “I'd only been DJing a few months, when I went to Burning Man with a bunch of my UK friends who convinced me to bring my USBs,” she reveals. "We had a small camp and an art car shaped like a Ouija board. We'd drive it out into the desert and play music. My friend Josh Ludlow [co-founder of party and label Make A Dance] and I spent the entire time spinning soul, disco, funk, and rock edits. Then, one night, I played a track, and Dixon came up to our art car and told me he loved it. We invited him to join us and ended up having this incredible three-hour sunrise moment together, just me, Josh, and Dixon. I remember thinking, 'This is amazing. I want to do this forever’," she grins. “After that, I went home and told Josh, 'We should play back-to-back, we should do something together', and that's how we created Pvblic Xcess.”

Dixon offered them a residency the following summer at Pacha playing the Funky Room for his night Transmoderna. “We played a B2B closing [secret after party spot] The Kave with Dixon, for 16 hours which was just nuts!” recalls Chloé. “That was definitely one of the sets that marked my career. I remember landing back home in New York after four months in Ibiza and saying to myself 'Okay, I am now a DJ’."

A pep talk from a close friend propelled Chloé even closer towards her fate. “If I was going to make it as a DJ, she told me I had to put all my focus into being an artist. New York is such a matter of everything. It's a hub of fashion, art, music, culture. As a creative New Yorker, you're constantly inspired and hyper-stimulated. That's a huge part of who I am today and probably why I create how I do. I love going out, and I love being social. I wouldn't miss a party, you know; send me an invite to the launch of a pizza shop, and I'll be there. But eventually, I was getting burnt out,” Chloé confesses.

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“You can get in this cycle in New York and big cities where you feel like your job is to be out and stay relevant. You're fearing that you're missing something, but all you're missing is pouring that time into what you're the most passionate about,” she continues. “I was having a lot of anxiety, and it was affecting my health. Musically, I love being in diverse company and vibrant energies but I’m also sensitive to absorbing energy. So I had to decide between my art and my lifestyle. It was hard, but I had to learn how to step away and just be like, 'I'm gonna sleep tonight and focus on what I love’.

"When I was young teachers would say, ''Chloés gifted — there's something real here; this isn't just a kid who is learning an instrument.' But honestly, at first, when I was calling myself an artist out loud, I was terrified and very vulnerable. You have to put yourself out there, regardless of what team you build; you're on your own and in charge of the show.”

The infrastructure of Chloé’s current team in 2024 features two female New Yorkers, independent co-managers and music industry veterans. Shauna Slevin, who developed The Martinez Brothers and Virgil Abloh, takes care of business in the day, while former Universal A&R, Natalia Romiszewski works through the night. Chloé jokes that she “discovered” Natalia, when she insisted Natalia switch jobs from pop music A&R and become her manager after Burning Man. That move led to nine months of Natalia persuading Shauna to come on board in 2021 as her partner and inject her unprecedented knowledge, understanding of Ibiza dynamics and strong ethics to Chloés rapid success.

Before the duo came together, Chloé already had international offers stacking up. But as 2020 hit, she was forced to a halt. If she wanted to continue making music she had to develop her production skills without the help of collaborator Josh Ludlow and put everything they'd created with Pvblic Xcess on pause.

“Like everyone, I was freaked out. My career was just taking off, the ball was rolling. I'd just had my first Ibiza residency, and now all my gigs were getting cancelled,” Chloé says. "Josh had basically been the engineer, and I was the one playing a lot of the synths. So I moved to the countryside in the UK and just bottled down in the studio on my own. I spent eight to 10 hours a day drilled in, and focused on production, production, production. I was learning off YouTube, I started using Ableton, calling friends and asking, ‘Hey, I'm trying to make this sound. How does it work?’.

"I was sitting on a lot of music. I bought a few more synths and spent the second half of COVID in Ibiza. I linked up with people I'd connected with back in 2019, like Sam and Antonio (DC-10) and the guys from Rockstar Games, and we all became friends. I got an offer to play the Circoloco reopening, and suddenly it was like ‘Life is okay again. I’m gonna have a career after all.’”

More than that, Circoloco agreed to put out her debut EP. Around the same time, in 2021, Chloé met Beck at a party in LA and released her first remix. “He told me how French producers were some of his favourite artists. So I start telling him that Air and Phoenix are some of my favourite bands,” she says. “He'd just released 'Hyperspace' and asked me if I would like to remix a track.” We both chuckle. “I thought 'me?’ I'm not a big artist’. But I think he thought I was. So I remixed 'Chemical', and that was a really crazy, good experience.”

Chloé then released her ‘Intro’ EP on CircoLoco Records in 2023. The five-track project formed a blueprint of her blend of global influences and garnered widespread acclaim. Despite the majority of the music being made in isolation, miles away from a dancefloor, it was filled with intoxicating drum lines, Afrobeats and Latin rhythms woven with sleazy synth and ballroom licks, like on the danceflor-driven lead single ‘New York What The Fuck’ (stylised as ‘NYWTF’) feat. Mikhail Beltra. The follow-up ‘Know Now’, with St. Lucian artist Poté on vocals landed her a spot on Billboard’s Best New Music list. ‘Quieres (Part 1)’ featured a Spanish freestyle, compliments of Ana Sting, who Chloé coaxed into singing with a glass of wine during an at-home session in Ibiza, while ‘Quieres (Part 2)’ featured the Benin-born, Nigeria-raised guitarist and vocalist Kaleta singing in Yoruba.

“I think a lot of times, as producers and artists, when you make music it’s very personal. You kind of make it for yourself, and never expect other people to necessarily like it. So to have other people buy into it and put energy behind it, that was a big moment. It hit me again, ‘Oh my god! This is something proper’.”

In early 2024, Chloé jumped on her first major South American tour with Fatboy Slim, which led to her ‘Role Model’ remix which dropped in July. “I love working across genres with all kinds of people. He’s been doing this for 44 years, and I learned so much from being on tour with him. Honestly, he’s such an amazing person. I asked him so many questions, and he gave me great, great advice,” she says. At the top of the year, she had also launched Smiile Records with a time-melting, warped 303 masterpiece ‘12 Inch Acid’ in collaboration with Luke Alessi, then switched gears with a rework of Dua Lipa’s pop hit ‘Training Season’ landing in March and garnering heaps more industry praise.

“I made ‘12 Inch Acid’ with Luke Alessi here in August last year. I was orginally drawn to Ibiza for its energy, musical history and because I feel free to be myself. I moved into this house during the pandemic, set up my studio and never left,” she says. Walking through Chloé's Ibiza villa feels like stepping into an issue of Architectural Digest. Like her music, the space is an expertly curated mix of global influences and idiosyncratic style. Smooth white stone walls serve as the backdrop for a custom wooden soundsystem, a floor-to-ceiling vinyl collection, Yamaha keys, a Fender Stratocaster, a vintage Kia bass, coffee table books, plush tapestries and woven rugs. Next to her home studio—stacked with an impressive array of over a dozen synths and other gear—she muses, “I've always written and produced music using a lot of synthesizers, guitars, and basses. I just bought a [Roland] Juno-60, one of my favorite instruments ever, and an [Korg] MS2000B.”

Chloé made 80% of ‘Here to Make You Smile’ EP in this spot, including club-ready singles ‘Be Good’ and ‘Last One For Today’ with Sheffield producer Nyra. “I invited him to my house, and we spent a week making a bunch of music. It was really organic and filled with lovely conversations,” she says. Singer, songwriter and producer SG Lewis also did a stint at Chloé’s. “It was so nice just to create together, stress-free. We could take a break, go for a hike with Cosmo. Refresh our minds. Then we could go jump in the ocean really quick. Nature is the most inspiring thing!”

Chloé found inspiration for her most personal song she’s ever made in her kitchen. “I was making tea and SG Lewis played a beat from the studio and I just started singing the lyrics for ‘B Somebody’: “I just wanna be somebody / somebody who loves me.” She continues. “SG ran in and insisted that I go into the booth and sing on the mic. The song is about letting go and loving yourself and he made it sound great. It was a first, but I'm gonna start using my voice more often.”

On the descent into winter, when news around the world feels at its darkest, ‘Here to Make You Smile’ is a euphoric elixir at a time dancers need it most. “The world right now is in chaos. It’s such a crazy, messy place and I just decided to make music to lift things up. This EP is full of love, it’s pulsating with joy and anthemic basslines.You can listen to it in the morning when you wake up, blast it in your car, at the gym, or in the club. Anytime you need to smile,” she says.

“When I was trying to think of a name for my label, a rave concept and my next EP, I was thinking: What does dance music make me do? When I’m on a dancefloor what do I experience? It's a place that makes me happy,” she continues. “It’s always been a dream of mine to throw a party at Pikes, ever since the first time I saw DJ Harvey play. But my proudest accomplishment to date has been building a community with Smiile and taking that on a world tour. I wanted to create inclusive spaces that were safe, where dancers could authentically express themselves, align with their heart. But that also champions queer artists, with zero tolerance for discrimination and boasts world-class soundsystems.”

“I want to unite artists and like-minded people across the globe. I want them to let go, be present and truly let the music take them on a journey together,” she adds, reflecting on the dancefloor as a place of healing and liberation. “When it comes to Smiile the label, I want to release music in my own time and amplify artists I admire.”

The sun sets and her team pull up to start laying out an array of small plates on a long wooden table ; a “dinner concept” which Chloé has introduced before each Smiile event as a way to connect artists. “Ibiza is where I come to recharge. I eat healthy, I take vitamins. I do a lot of body and breath work. This job is pretty intense on the mind, on the body, on the soul, on your brain cells. But at the same time, I practise gratitude for being in a such a privileged position where I’m able to go to Brazil and play Carnival, and then the next day, fly to Berlin and play Panorama Bar, and then next thing, you know, I'm in London playing Colour Factory or back at my residency at DC-10.”

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If there’s one bit of vital advice she can offer fellow DJs, she shares: “I know DJs who travel across the world, get a flight the next day and go home. Okay, you save some money, but it's much more rewarding if you invest an extra day or two. You get to know the promoter better, you meet other local artists in nightlife, and maybe they book you. My favourite experiences are seeking out the underbelly of a music scene and feeling completely out of place. It makes me want to learn about the sounds that come from that country, meet who’s playing the music, see the way they dance, understand their history so that I leave on another frequency.”

As we head inside to eat Chloé talks about an upcoming trip to Iceland with her dad, how her parents come to her shows, and how proud she is to have sisters and a little brother who are hardcore ravers. She discusses a gargantuan CD collection of compilations from the San Francisco Flower Power movement that she has in the shed and how she’s returning to her rock roots on the next EP. “I love Hendrix, King Crimson, Funkadelic - all trippy, psychedelic guitar. But the most influential band of all time for me is Pink Floyd, which is my dad's favourite. I'm so inspired by the way they developed their sonic identity and were masters at bridging technology and music.” Chloé lights up. “Also, they made eight albums before ‘Dark Side of the Moon’! To have that many bodies of work before hitting your number one is unheard of today. Let alone drop a song that’s 32-minutes long?!”

What does her future music sound like? “I’m bringing a lot of my old influences in, so there's a lot of rock and roll. The more music I'm making, the closer I am towards feeling comfortable to really showcase who I am deep inside. And I think that's taken me years to unleash,” Chloé explains. “A few times in my career, I’ve made rushed decisions or ended up playing in certain places that were not true to who I am. Now, I’m taking time to make the right decisions and only go in with my full heart.”

Her team heads to DC-10, and I’m left to dig through Chloé’s records and hang out with Cosmo while she gets changed. Packed into the back of the taxi on the way to the club, she asks me about myself. I tell her we have a lot in common. That I once managed bands, worked in fashion, and landed a job as a music journalist without passing high school English. That my dad was a roadie who introduced me to the likes of Janis Joplin, Mary Wells, Fleetwood Mac at 2:AM when he’d come home from working with the bands, that those moments singing, dancing and bonding with my dad (much to my mum’s dismay) are some of the most poignant I have, and she beams. As we pull up to Circoloco she retells me a story from her 2023 Mixmag feature where her dad danced with her in his arms on the rooftop of their New York City apartment in 1997 blasting ‘School’ by Supertramp. After disclosing that I was once a professional salsa dancer, Chloé and her girlfriend Carla perk up. “Carla used to play Spanish guitar and Flamenco. Dating a Spanish woman really influenced a lot of my musicality, rhythms and vocals. I learned so much about her world and a lot about Latin culture, which really inspired me,” she says.

Chloé riffs about how other DJs are being pushed to play blistering BPMs and her disinterest in following the crowd as the taxi pulls up to the artist's entrance. “Man, this didn’t feel like an interview!” she remarks, and for a moment I forget too that Chloé is minutes away closing her first-ever set on the terrace for her residency at Circoloco. These are the milestones Chloé Caillet is hitting at an impressive rate now. A plane flies overhead as the door swings open, and her long-time friends from Make A Dance are waiting with an entourage. Kylie Minogue is on the dancefloor, and 4000 adoring fans await.

‘Here To Make You Smile’ is out now, check it here

Tracy Kawalik is a freelance music journalist, follow her on Twitter