German dance music empire BigCityBeats is no stranger to unique experiences. Its flagship World Club Dome packs out a whole football stadium and the surrounding fields every year in Frankfurt, while the winter edition — held in Gelsenkirchen — has repeatedly set the record for biggest solo DJ show in Germany. On top of that WCD offers parties on private jets, trains and in the airport, and last year saw the launch of World Club Cruise too. But CEO Bernd Breiter is not one to rest on his laurels, and after watching a report on astronaut training one Sunday morning he came up with perhaps the most insane clubbing experience ever conceived.
Nicknamed the ‘vomit comet’ after early passengers had a habit of… well, you can probably guess what… the A300 ZERO-G Airbus is a hollowed out plane operated by French company Novespace used to prepare astronauts for space and conduct experiments under the effect of zero gravity without actually leaving the atmosphere. The aircraft flies in a parabolic curve (never thought you’d read that in DJ Mag, eh?), which consists of a rapid ascent and descent with a brief period at the top where a state of weightlessness occurs and everything inside floats around. Bernd’s idea? Turn the plane into a club and fill it full of floating ravers. Why? “Cos we’re crazy,” he says to DJ Mag with a glint in his eye. We always did love a bit of crazy…
DJ Mag joins a host of competition winners from around the world (there’s even one guy who’s flown over from Australia) in Frankfurt, along with superstar EDM-ers W&W and Steve Aoki — the latter of whom is a known futurist. “I heard that you have no control of your bladder and your butthole,” laughs Steve when we catch him pre-flight to chat about his expectations. “Besides that… We’re setting a world record. I love the idea of being the first to try something or the first to do something.” Steve sees the wider benefit of such a unique event too, bringing extra publicity to the electronic music scene. “For me it’s all about making it fun!”
The plane itself looks incredible. Fully padded to protect from the obvious injuries that could occur while floating around, BigCityBeats’ lighting technician has kitted it out with twisting spotlights and coloured strips, making it genuinely look like some futuristic club — no easy feat! Up in the sky, Aoki and W&W strap into the DJ booth and promptly crack on with the EDM and trap bangers. After a short period of dancing it’s time for the zero g… DJ Mag joins everyone in lying flat on the floor — in the ascent and descent periods before and after the weightlessness, passengers experience something called ‘hyper-gravity’. As sci-fi as it sounds, during this time, we’ll weigh twice as much as normal, and actually experience more g-force than astronauts on a proper space shuttle launch. Moving during this time upsets the balancing fluid in the human ear, resulting in dizziness, which in turn results in the ‘Vomit Comet’.
