Jul 29

Jul 29 Jamie XX and Solomun at Pacha Ibiza

Pacha's walls still remember the night Jamie xx and Solomun traded rhythms until sunrise, one playful and open, the other deep and relentless, together rewriting what a b2b can sound like.
I keep a mental list of nights that redraw the map of what I think dance music can do, and July 12th at Pacha now sits near the top of it. Solomun +1 brought Jamie xx back into the booth as he’s done for the past four years, once again showing how naturally they fell back into rhythm together.

Their connection runs deeper than one shared night. Solomun released two remixes of Jamie's "Waited All Night" off his acclaimed In Waves album, a gesture that told you exactly how much respect passed between these two before they ever stood behind the same decks again. Sunday gave that respect a stage.

Jamie opened first, and true to form he refused the obvious. Rather than chase an early peak he built something closer to a conversation, pulling from his own back catalog, "Treat Each Other Right," the rougher "KILL DEM," his work with The Avalanches on "All You Children," while letting UK garage, jungle, and house move through the set like weather systems passing overhead. There is a lightness to how Jamie handles a crowd, an insistence on letting people arrive at the feeling themselves rather than being pushed toward it.

I have carried Jamie xx with me for a long time now. "Gosh" was the record that first pulled me into his world, that stretch of sound where a single tension builds and builds without ever fully resolving, the kind of production that taught me patience is its own instrument. So walking into Pacha on July 12th, I already knew I was not there as a neutral observer. I was there as someone who has spent years inside his catalog, waiting for a night like this one.

The moment he dropped "All You Children," his collaboration with The Avalanches, something in the room shifted for me specifically. I have heard that record hundreds of times through headphones, on trains, in kitchens, but hearing it inside Pacha, a room with that much history pressed into its walls, turned it into something else entirely. It is strange how a song you know by heart can still surprise you when the context around it changes completely. That single moment alone would have made the night worth it for me.

There is also a quieter thread running through this night that felt personal in a different way. Solomun is Bosnian, and I am Albanian, and there is something about hearing that particular strength and depth in his sound, the low end that carries real weight, that feels close to home for me. The Balkans have a way of producing music with a certain gravity to it, an intensity that comes from somewhere older than the dancefloor. Watching him move the room, telling a story through music, I recognized something in that power that felt familiar, almost like a shared language passed down through geography rather than genre.

Jamie opened with his usual patience, pulling from "Treat Each Other Right" and the rougher "KILL DEM," letting UK garage and jungle breathe through the set at their own pace. I love that about him, the refusal to force a peak, the trust that a room will arrive at the feeling on its own timeline. Solomun followed and turned that same energy downward and inward, giving it more gravity without losing the lift Jamie had built. Both sets, on their own, were exactly what I hoped for.

But the b2b was where the night truly lived for me. Watching two artists with such different instincts stand at the same desk and refuse to compromise those instincts, choosing instead to let them sit side by side and argue it out in real time, was the most compelling part of the entire evening. Jamie reaching for air, Solomun reaching for weight, neither one folding into the other. That friction is rare. Most collaborations soften each artist's edges until neither is fully recognizable. This one kept both fully intact, and the tension between them became the actual music.

“I stood inside Pacha as Jamie xx’s UK playfulness met Solomun’s raw power, two languages of sound colliding into one unforgettable night on the island.”

By the time they closed things out, the sun already climbing over the terrace, I remember standing there thinking about how rarely a night manages to hit you on every level at once, the music, the memory, the roots. This one did all three, and I am still turning it over in my head days later.

Walking out of Pacha as the sun climbed, I understood why this residency keeps its reputation intact season after season. Some pairings look good on a poster. This one sounded even better in the room.