Sound from the console: Mumbai-based DJs on their favourite clubs

They are idiosyncratic, their heads move in symphony with the crowd when at work. Silent headphone parties to earsplitting cavalcades, DJs are all over the music space today.

Four Mumbai-based spinners discuss their favourite clubs, venues and performance spaces (India and abroad).

DJ Akhtar
DJ Akhtar is different; he prefers open-air gigs. He believes destinations are more important than the quality of the clubs keeping in mind the acoustics. "My all-time favourite would be Ruby Skyee in San Francisco and the bay area in Beaumont by the golf club. An enclosed space isn't as much fun. I have seen many clubs, I feel I have performed better in places that do not look attractive but would sell on view and location," he says. Akhtar started spinning at a time when music channels didn't exist, his stakes naturally went higher.

DJ Shireen
Shireen threw her hat in the party ring since her college days. Though a Mumbai resident, her heart lies in Singapore. "People in Singapore understand any genre that the DJ plays. I play Bollywood but I throw in a lot of Hip-Hop and Rock. I end with Electronic Dance Music (EDM)," Shireen says, who also loves Club Kismet (Hyderabad) and iBar (Bengaluru). "After Mumbai, my pick would be Bengaluru and then, Hyderabad," says Shireen, who is also one of the first Indian female DJs to have cut an EDM album named One last year.

Spacejams (DJ Yohann)
"In Mumbai, your audience will come up to you and request for a song but that doesn't happen when you are playing a gig abroad," suggests Yohann, who picked Japan and Croatia among his picks. "When playing overseas, the promoters do not come and screw your head, here, they (at times) ask me to change the vibe which is annoying. In India, we are asked to promote our own gigs and get our own crowd which doesn't happen abroad," he adds. But The Tao Terraces and The Humming Tree (Bengaluru) are his preferred consoles in India.

DJ Akhil Talreja
The man who worships the music in California, Auckland and the Middle East believes circumstances in Mumbai can be even better by increasing the deadline in clubs. "Our city needs more state-of-the-art night clubs than just sports bars. The government needs to support it more than being against it," he believes.