While other DJs were playing house parties and pop-up raves, Chrispin Kaji was chopping wood on a mountain in Nepal to build a table for his decks.
Most DJs haul their gear to clubs and festivals, but Chrispin Kaji lugged his to 16,000 feet in Nepal’s Annapurna range, where the oxygen gets thin and the only crowd is the wind.
Kaji and his friend Agaman spent two weeks trekking the treacherous mountain range, sleeping in tea houses and hauling camera equipment higher into the Himalayas, he tells EDM.com. His plan was to record a DJ set at altitude and wrap it into a short film.
Finding the right spot near Tilicho Basecamp meant a brutal climb, followed by a full day chopping wood to build a makeshift table for the DJ decks. They decorated it with stones pulled from the mountainside, then returned at dawn to capture Kaji’s performance.
The conditions were punishing, he says. Freezing temperatures and relentless winds battered Kaji and Agaman but they pushed through, nailing the shoot before the elements could shut them down.
“The place was extremely windy and cold, but we both ate it up when it came to the shoot and gave our best,” Kaji recalls.
Back in Kathmandu, the real grind began. Kaji says he spent an exorbitant amount of time editing his footage to produce a short film, stitching together his DJ set with additional clips shot in Buddhist monasteries and Hindu temples around the valley. The tracklist features his own remixes of music by Avicii, Martin Garrix, Zedd, Swedish House Mafia and others.
Kaji eventually screened the finished film in a theater, testing whether the improbable project actually worked before releasing it today. You can watch the full short film, titled ZEPHYR 11, below.