#1: A hot air balloon in Turkey, the pyramids in Giza, and a huge rock in Colombia

The story of Cercle and how they create exceptional DJ live set performances

👋 Hi friends, it's Hesam with issue #1 of 4 bits. 4 bits is a biweekly newsletter where I share thoughts and musings on how to build memorable experiences.

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Three quick life updates:

- 🥂 Celebrated New Years Eve with family. My wife and I had a chance to escape from the kids to go to Refuge, a 50 seat cocktail bar where we landed a last minute reservation. With a list of 20 cocktails and glassware from Japan, Italy and France, you have 90 minutes for your reservation to pay $16 a drink in a dimly lit room. From cloth napkins to exceptional service, no detail was overlooked. Not someplace we'd visit regularly, but appropriate for a special occasion.

- 🏃🏽‍♂️ In the midst of the sprint before the Spring semester begins. We're building even more momentum in our foundational New Enterprises entrepreneurship course. 140 students are enrolled across graduate and undergraduate students at Rice. That's 60% more students than two years ago.

- 🦆 Smoked a duck for Christmas Eve. It was my first time smoking on our Green Egg grill, and if the absence of leftovers is an indicator, it was fantastic. Looking to explore more recipes.

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A hot air balloon in Turkey, the pyramids in Giza, and a huge rock in Colombia: the allure of Cercle

Ben Böhmer in a hot air balloon in the Cappadocia, Turkey. The production team strapped 4 car batteries to the balloon to power all of Ben's equipment.

I first fell in love with dance music in the late 90s.

Back then, there was no YouTube. The only way to listen to the newest music was to pirate tracks and DJ set recordings on the Internet.

Since you were connecting via a dial-up modem, the downloads took forever. If you forgot to turn off call waiting on your phone line, an incoming call could cause the connection to drop. That latest DJ set you discovered on a shady Russian site that you'd spent the last twenty three hours downloading? Canceled. It was agonizing.

Once my download would hit 100% complete, I'd quickly burn it to a CD and listen away. The process repeated over and over again for years.

The Internet has changed a lot since then. What used to be scarce and required effort is now instantly available. You can see DJ performances on video or live streamed from all over the world.

There are millions of options to watch live performances at your fingertips. But most look the same: they're either at a live festival stage, a club, an arena, or a pool.

But then there's Cercle.

I came across Cercle on YouTube one day and was mesmerized by their live set videos. Here's some bits on their background and what makes them special.

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Cercle

Cercle is a live streaming group and media company based out of Paris. They design and broadcasts DJ sets in places you wouldn't expect.

The Eiffel Tower? Check.

The world's largest salt flat in Bolivia? Check.

A mountain in Japan? Check.

The DJ sets are with well known artists, including Above and Beyond, Zhu, and Carl Cox. Some performances have an in person audience. In others, like the world's largest salt flat in Bolivia, only the DJ and the live set crew are there in person. It's kind of hard to dance on a salt flat.

With a combination of drones and high quality cinematography, you could sit and watch a Cercle performance for hours.

Cercle now has 2.7 million YouTube followers, 1 million Instagram followers, and even their own record label: Cercle Records.

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What makes Cercle special?

One of my favorite groups, Above and Beyond, performing in Guatape, Colombia on a huge rock. It takes 708 steps up a staircase to get to the top where the performance is happening.

If you're at a Cercle performance live, it's the experience of a lifetime. When will you ever get to dance in that space, in that country, again?

There's also exclusivity to being there. Cercle tickets sell out faster than a Taylor Swift concert. You have to get tickets as soon as they're released. If you wait 15 minutes, you won't get them at all.

And the bar for live DJ performances continues to go up. Venues have always been a critical part of the performance. Festival stages with enough flashing lights to trigger a seizure capture your attention. But there's nothing like being in a space that is beautiful to begin with. The historical and cultural significance of the venues can't be copied.

For those that can't attend in person, Cercle sets itself apart by being a YouTube video you'd be comfortable playing in the background at a house party, if only because of the visuals. You're not just watching a performance. You're admiring a part of the world in an unexpected way.

A sheer amount of creativity and hustle is required to curate and create Cercle events. And when faced with an endless sea of choices on what to watch on YouTube, I know I can always go back to Cercle when I'm looking for an inspiring view and some good beats.

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