I need to chill. No, genuinely, I need to chill.

I need to embody my editor persona and start telling myself that some of these stories should not be published.

What is this title? What am I even on about?

On the other hand, this is an iconic set. Does it limit the number of readers who will get it? Yes. But the real ones will know.

I have published many stories on this site. Many of them reflected who I am as a person, my inner depths, my emotions, and my life. I wrote about art, films, music, and personal experiences, and now I am writing about a DJ set I saw on YouTube.

So the two possible conclusions you can draw are: I have reached the limit of my ”complex” personality, or this 42-minute YouTube video means so much to me that I desperately need to add it to my lore as a writer. Well, both are true, I guess. Mostly, I am out of deep emotional stories that I have processed enough to write about, so instead, I’m writing about this.

This story begins like many others—a small group of friends, a night after a party, a living room, a TV, and that feeling of being tired enough to not want to go out but not yet ready to go to sleep. After an amazing experience seeing the man himself, KAYTRANADA, live, we sat on the couch, thirsting for more. We played his songs on the ride back, we talked about how amazing the set was, and we needed something else.

My friends were sharing impressions and opinions, and I was just happy to be alive. Minutes before KAYTRANADA went up on the stage, I was feeling exhausted, nauseous and ready to abandon the idea of dancing in a sweaty crowd and just go home. The second he came on stage, my exhaustion went away; I merged with the sound of music and danced for two hours, forgetting the rest of the world existed. I was pushed and shoved, and normally, that would make me feel worse, but on that night, I gave no fucks.

I was so excited for more of his music.

“What else can we play?” a friend of mine asked.

We went on YouTube and looked up his name. I am not sure if one of my friends has already seen parts of the set or if it was new to all of us. It was 12 a.m., and I had been out all day; forgive me, my memory betrays me a little bit.

We pressed play. And so it begins.

From the second I saw a crowd of people dancing to the sweet sounds of 2013 KAYTRANADA, I was hooked. At first, it was just about hearing the music that brought me back from the edge of the afterlife, but then I began to really look. We all did.

Before going into the complex dynamics of the bright characters starring in this hard-to-believe-not-staged masterpiece, I need to give a special shout-out to Shay Lia, a girl who spends most of the duration of the set by the DJ’s side embodying the sort of dancing that only happens when your heart and body unite with the beat forming one living, breathing organism. Her sense of rhythm and incredibly elaborate moves reminded me of a nymph melodically moving through the ethereal realm, powered by the smooth tunes of R&B and Dance music.

There were other characters, of course, from the guys walking through the background of the set carrying towers of beer cans to a lady wearing a black cropped top with silver studs, a checkered high wasted mini-skirt, sliver chains and a large bow on her head—a classic 2010s outfit.

The clothing in the video alone can serve as a strong case study of a confusing and chaotic fashion period. Colourful tops and t-shirts with strange prints perfectly encapsulate the confusing time when a crowd of people living in post-financial crisis times gathered for a day, still lost, but for a night, found in their joint spirit of supporting then up-and-coming artist.

The camera takes its time going through the people in the crowd. Each more chaotic than the other, they seem to be almost oblivious to the lens pointing at them. You can’t tell if they are performing for the camera or are simply caught in a moment when the alcohol in their blood is up, and self-awareness is down. I prefer to think it’s the latter. After all, art is in the eye of the beholder.

Every person is giving their all in a frighteningly specific way. The dances we see in the crowd are all different, unique, and some of them are so fucking weird you are really not sure what you are watching. I direct your attention to the 13-minute mark, where we get a brief glimpse of the crowd. You don’t see so many aggressively different interpretations of dancing to the same song often.

Somewhere around the 10-minute mark, the camera angle changes again, revealing that the set is taking place in an empty room of a warehouse (in Montreal). There is no club or fancy setting, just a room with a DJ deck and a crowd.

That detail fascinated me. It made the whole set feel like a dream, secluded from the world, from reality. You are looking into an event that might as well be happening on a different planet. You are a guest who only sees what the camera wants you to see. You get a little taste, a snippet of an immortalised moment where a group participates in shared delirium. In another way, though, this angle switch provides honest context— it reveals the truth, showing you how rare truth really is. In the current era of AI masquerading as authenticity, Photoshop, filters, and rising public mistrust towards everything they see, it’s nice to look at a video and know that it isn’t hiding anything. It is what it is, and it’s set where it’s set; there is not more to it. Although, there is sort of it.

Since I watched the video for the first time, I have learned everything about the setting, the people, and the dynamics between them. Shay Lia, for example, is not just a girl famously moving her hips to Be Your Girl; she is a singer, whose vocals are featured on multiple KAYTRANADA tracks. I read her interviews and saw her TikToks. I’m really locked in.

Through the communication between the background characters and their brief conversations with the DJ himself, you can deduce notes of friendship. I later found out that this set was private, only open to the performer’s friends and friends of friends (I assume). Perhaps that’s what makes it so magical, so alluring. You get to look into the life of a group of people connected with each other by something more than just buying the same ticket on the same date.

It’s a house party that transforms an empty, warehouse-like room into a home. A feeling of community we so often chase on our nights out. The safety of knowing that the people around you are connected and no matter where you look, you will find a friendly face.

Maybe that safety is also freeing. It allows attendees to let loose, dance, and have fun, letting go of caution and just enjoying themselves. It’s the perfect cathartic experience—the kind we don’t allow ourselves much nowadays. Looking at the lives of people who, for one night, become one in the organised chaos of this KAYTRANADA-induced hallucination, I felt connected to the past and hopeful about the future where I can experience that kind of liberation.

In the last three years, I have watched this gem of a Boiler Room set at least 10 times. I read through the comments, finding a community of my own among hundreds of viewers who, just like me, felt deeply connected to this crazy experience. I watched it with my friends, sharing fun facts once every 10 minutes. But nothing compared to that first time. That time when I was one with the crazy dancing and melodic sounds. The moment when, for the second time that day, KAYTRANADA brought me back to life.