When a DJ is proposed to perform at any event, one of the first questions he asks is: “How much time will I have to play?” In recent years, some festivals and clubs have opted to compress the duration of the performances in order to be able to agglomerate more names in the same time and, ultimately, expand their line-up. A lot of people (including artists and promoters) have talked about this in the industry.
For some DJs, this is a big challenge, since it forces the artist to curate much more the musical selection and to make difficult decisions when preparing a tracklist. On the other side, other artists consider that acting shortly prevents narrating an elaborate story, since in an hour or an hour and a half there is not enough space for going “up and down“. In general, artists consider that a 3-hours set is ideal to convey their message to the audience. Do you think it’s long? Probably it seems a joke for the guys we are gonna mention below. They are just heroes, artists who have extended their actions to unimaginable limits that escape the rational understanding of any human being.
In summer of 2016, Space Ibiza said goodbye to its audience with its most iconic party, Music Is Revolution by Carl Cox. The famous British DJ performed for 9 hours, mixing vinyl from past decades with the latest releases of the best labels of today. Another Briton, Erol Alkan, ended up playing for 10 hours in 2013 at his last annual marathon session in Easter. Ben Klock played techno for 12 hours in Berghain helped by bananas, giving the last of them to a clubber who ended up selling it on the net. Marco Carola and Dubfire doubled that. Both were for 24 hours on the stage at the Romanian festival Sunwaves. That mark was also achieved by UK Garage selector DJ EZ. Unfortunately, none of them is within the top-10.
10. Joseph Capriati (25 hours)
The Italian Joseph Capriati went to Miami’s Heart Nightclub with the intention of marking one of the longest sets of his career, but never imagined that it would has reached those mad levels. It was November 2017. It started on a Saturday night and ended on Monday, 25 hours and 30 minutes later.
9. Danny Tenaglia (30 hours)
We could say that Danny Tenaglia is the extended sets master. His famous 12-hours sessions got success after success, until the day when he wanted to end them in New York with a 24-hour “closing-forever” set. He did it, but kept playing for the club’s staff members for six more hours, getting 30 hours of techno music.
8. tINI & Bill Patrick (31 hours)
The German tINI and the American Bill Patrick played b2b at Sunwaves, the festival that has become ideal destination for marathon sets. The festival had recently lived the 25 hours set by Marco Carola, something that could outshine the performance of tINI in that 2015 edition. She wanted to take part of the challenge delivering, at the following edition of the festival, a 31-hours DJ set with Bill. Unbelievable!
7. DJ Buddy Love (80 hours)
It was the first remarkable record in history. 80 hours. It happened in June 2003. At that time, the world record was 10 hours. Buddy Love beat it with the aim of raising funds for the American Cancer Society, an association that fights cancer, a disease suffered by several members of the American DJ family. The cause aroused great interest and received a lot of support from around the world.
6. DJ Alan D (120 hours)
2009. A whole working week. Alan Duckett was putting music without stopping. The ones who were there say that the man was washing himself and even shaving himself during the performance. No matter how much you want to break records, you should never forget about how you look. You would agree with us that 5 days are a lot of days!
5. Rene Brunner (150 hours)
Competing for the record became a trend in the scene and the Californian Rene Brunner wanted to overcome Alan D. He got it and reached 6 days of uninterrupted music.
4. DJ Hertz (152 hours)
One year later, in 2012, this madness continued to increase. DJ Hertz wanted to achieve the highest number and he got it. Although for a minimum margin of 120 minutes, this artist improved Brunner’s record by “only” 2 hours.
3. Smokin’ Joe Mekhael (168 hours)
Another job mate, Smokin’ Joe, tried for his second time to be the toughest DJ on the planet. On that occasion there was not even one mistake. On his first attempt, he played for 132 hours.Nevertheless, the DJ apparently not happy with his result decided to try another time one year later. The result? Smokin’ Joe overseen the decks for 7 days. SEVEN. Is it enough clear to you? SEVEN.
2. Norberto Loco (200 hours)
Smokin’ Joe could finally sign the longest DJ set ever made. However, right around the corner there was a Polish artist known as Norbert Selmaj arrived to reach the unbelievable 200-hours DJ set. Honouring his alias, Norberto Loco took over The Underground Temple Bar in Dublin (Ireland) and went from the 19 to the 27 of November 2014 playing discs. 8 long days!
1. DJ Obi (240 hours)
The current Guinness Record is for the Nigerian DJ Obi. In summer of 2016, he summoned his friends and followers in his hometown Lagos to make them dance for a whopping 10 days. It looks impossible. He explains that two seconds micro naps during the set and 5-minutes breaks per hour from music, allowed him to keep on playing, although he began to suffer hallucinations from the fifth day.
Some rules were also established in order for DJ Obi, to successfully acquire the Guinness World Record. It was not allowed to repeat a track within four hours after it had been played. Guinness followed the endeavour closely, as did it the BBC and all of us. A hurray for DJ Obi … and another one for who will able to beat this record!!