A bit of shameless crowdsourcing here - I’m playing a 3 hour set on NYD here in Sydney and there are 15 other DJs on the bill across 2 rooms.
What is a secret weapon track that would suit a day party and make the crowd all bug out with extreme happiness/excitement? Can be a chugger, a hidden Italian house gem, a funk weapon, a Balearic nugget etc etc.
These things are so dependent on your crowd. What might play well to people in their 30s and 40s could be a complete dud for those in their 20s. I also feel that these moments inherently come with jeopardy - you can’t have the element of surprise without a degree of risk.
There’s a recording of Gatto Fritto at Spanners where he drops ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’, a song I absolutely love and would have sent me bonkers. I don’t think I’d have had the guts to deploy it myself at the end of a house/techno set though.
I played ‘Sledgehammer’ at the end of Cocktail Amore once, there was a moment of indecision in the crowd but it worked very nicely.
I love Francesco Del Garda playing this (massively slowed down) Charli XCX edit here -
Yep, these moments are definitely fraught with risk and can go either way. I like to err on the side of caution, play something the crowd will know but maybe a cover version. Something like this:
Our crowd is typically the 30-50 range who know not to come expecting to hear much music they know already. However, a day like New Year’s Day needs some familiar bangers of the unexpected kind. A mixture of both will be the tactic here.
They recently brought hysteria to a small backroom in Leytonstone with the one-two punch of Dimitri From Paris’ edit of ‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’ followed by ‘While You See A Chance’