I hadn’t seen that Boiler Room set. Admitting it felt almost embarrassing, like turning up for an exam without having read the syllabus, but with sunglasses on and a Red Bull in hand. Still, I’d heard people say the sentence enough times for it to start sounding like a kind of entry requirement for Arena: “Have you seen that Boiler Room set?”
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Disclaimer: Apropos Magazine received access or a review copy. As always, we share our own impressions — unfiltered.
Six stars
“HAVE YOU SEEN THAT BOILER ROOM SET?”
No. I haven’t. But I’ve heard that sentence enough times for it to feel almost like a QR code you had to scan just to be allowed to understand why Arena was about to blow itself apart on Wednesday night.
And yes, of course it was packed. Not just packed with lots of people. More like: Roskilde’s entire algorithm had decided to stand in the same place at the same time. People drifted in from every direction with that particular festival gait, where you’re both heading toward something important and have also forgotten what your knees are called. It was around 1 a.m. It was late in the right way. Not sleepy late. More the state where your body has started sending strange emails to your brain, and the brain has switched on auto-reply.
¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U was originally booked for Eos, but the move to Arena quickly looked like one of those decisions that make the booking team seem like clairvoyants with access to TikTok stats. Because this wasn’t just a concert for people who had done their homework. It was a gathering for everyone who had heard the rumours, seen the clips, felt the pulse and thought: fine, then let’s see what the internet has coughed up from the basement this time.
The easy thing would be to write that Yousuke Yukimatsu is an internet phenomenon with a hideously beautiful artist name and a Boiler Room set that has turned him into a kind of holy figure for people who say “genre” with irony in their voice. But that would also be too lazy. Because behind the symbols, the hype and the viral aura lies a pretty wild story about a man from Osaka who listened to Sonic Youth and The Prodigy, played his first gig at 19, worked in construction during the week and DJed on weekends until a malignant brain tumour changed everything.
It’s a story that is almost too intense for a festival review. That kind of thing can get sticky very quickly. Culture journalism loves a diagnosis if it can be wrapped in a turning point and a press-ready quote about betting everything on the dream. But at Arena, the backstory didn’t become sentimental. It just hung in the air like strange knowledge. Not as a filter over the music, but as an explanation for the desperation in the set. That sense that he wasn’t playing to please, but because time may not be something you simply have.
And that’s exactly what’s so wild about ¥UK1MAT$U: he’s on the Roskilde poster without really being known for his own releases. He’s here for his DJ skills. For his bodily, punkish, almost action-movie way of putting music together. That’s rare in a time when everyone else is supposed to have a single, a rollout, a visual universe, a TikTok plan and some idiotic “era”. Here, instead, stood a man behind the decks who looked like he could dismantle a building with his bare hands and then play gabber for the ruins.
From the start, the set felt like something that refused to explain itself. It didn’t come in and say good evening. It kicked the door open, threw its shoes in the hallway and started rummaging through your Spotify history. It was cut, twisted, thrown and crushed. The genres didn’t arrive like pearls on a string, but like push notifications from parallel universes. Somewhere between club, collapse, anime, dubstep, trance, breakcore and that sound your computer makes just before it gives up and becomes a religious experience.
It could have become annoying. It was, a little. In the good way.
The first track I really recognised was “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites”. Suddenly I was standing there feeling like an extra in Spring Breakers, only without the weapons, neon bikini and James Franco with cornrows. The track was stretched out, almost too far. Right to the point where you start thinking: okay, boss, we get it. But then it shifted again. Not like a release. More like a wink from someone who knows they’ve kept you trapped in the elevator a little too long.
That was where the concert became interesting. Because ¥UK1MAT$U doesn’t only play for the reaction. He also plays with the waiting before the reaction. With the irritation. With the expectation. With that millisecond delay between the body wanting to dance and the brain still trying to figure out whether this is a joke, a genius move or just a man with an absurd number of folders on his hard drive.
Arena never became a Boiler Room. It couldn’t. Arena is too big, too open, too Roskilde. It doesn’t have that claustrophobic intimacy where the camera is practically inside people’s pores while everyone pretends not to know they’re being filmed. But it found its own strange logic that night. A huge, sweaty, collective browser tab no one dared to close.
The crowd was with him. Not necessarily in the classic hands-in-the-air sense, but as a mass accepting the premise. You didn’t have to understand everything. You just had to stay put. Which is, in fact, a pretty accurate description of a lot of modern culture.
Some concerts are about being able to sing along. Others are about being reminded that you still have a body. This was mostly the latter. Not a perfect concert. At times a little too insistent, a little too “look what I can do”, a little too much sonic doomscrolling with bass. But when it hit, it hit hard. And more importantly: it felt like something that could only happen there. Wednesday night. Arena. The festival’s collective nervous system open like an illegal file-sharing folder.
Reflection:
I still don’t know whether I fully understood ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U. But I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the point. Sometimes a concert isn’t a message you’re meant to decode. Sometimes it’s just a strange night that gets inside your body and stays there like an error message you can’t quite bring yourself to close.
