CIRCLE arrived at Le Cirque on Friday, August 7.
Le Cirque built the new gathering around a simple idea: bringing Jakarta’s underground electronic music community into one room.
CIRCLE didn’t center the night around a single headliner or a fixed musical identity.
Instead, it left the direction of the evening in the hands of six back-to-back pairings.
The music moved freely across different corners of the city’s underground scene.
It ranged from house and dark disco to indie dance, breaks, progressive, and after-hours selections.
CIRCLE Opens With a Slow Build
The night began quietly.
Forty × Oyisky opened the evening with a warm, slow-burning house selection.
At 10 PM, the room was still relatively sparse, giving the pair enough space to establish the mood without rushing toward a peak.
It felt less like an opening set designed to immediately capture attention, and more like the beginning of a gradual gathering.
An hour later, Dhika × Chef took the energy a step further.
Still rooted in house, their set was noticeably more pumping as more people began making their way into the room.
The transition was natural rather than dramatic, with the dance floor slowly becoming more populated as the night started to find its rhythm.
By the time Finish × Reno Renatama stepped in, the room had changed considerably.
Both selectors came from SALA, and their pairing delivered the eccentric character that has become familiar within their respective sounds.
Their house-driven set carried a distinct personality, adding another layer to the night without breaking the momentum established by the earlier sessions.
Six Pairings, One Continuous Conversation
CIRCLE was beginning to feel less like a sequence of individual performances and more like a continuous conversation.
That conversation shifted again when Odeq × Fabi took over.
The pair, representing Dub Container, moved through house, dark disco, and indie dance.
That range widened the musical palette without losing the connection to the dance floor.
It was another example of what made the format interesting: every B2B came with its own identity, yet each was given enough room to exist within the larger journey.
As the night moved deeper into the early hours, Andrehut × Bastedo brought another contrast.
Andrehut, representing Poles, stayed close to his house sensibilities while occasionally slipping breaks into the set, a touch that reflected his own musical character.
Bastedo, meanwhile, kept things relatively safe with progressive selections, including Âme’s “Rej,” alongside playful house cuts.
By then, the room had become considerably fuller than it was at the beginning of the night.
Read more: CIRCLE Unlocks Spectacular Arrival at Le Cirque on August 7, 2026
The Night’s Most Unexpected B2B
And then came the final pairing: Tantra × Rulli from ETV.
Their B2B was perhaps the most unexpected combination of the night. Both selectors are more commonly associated with different partners.
Rulli is usually paired with Shawn Muljadi. Tantra, meanwhile, frequently goes back-to-back with Indra7.
That pairing often explores darker melodic techno and progressive house territory.
This time, however, the dynamic was different.
Rulli brought his eclectic after-hours sensibilities into the booth, while Tantra adapted around him, balancing rather than overpowering the direction of the set.
Instead of trying to force their usual identities onto the pairing, the two seemed to find a middle ground in real time.
What CIRCLE Was Trying to Do
And that, in many ways, captured what CIRCLE was trying to do.
The concept was never about creating one uniform sound.
It was about allowing different selectors, collectives, and musical perspectives to overlap inside the same space.
The night moved between house, disco, indie dance, breaks, progressive, and after-hours territory without needing to draw a hard line between them.
That openness was also reflected in the crowd.
Some people arrived later as the night progressed, while others stayed from the very beginning until the final set.
Watching the room evolve alongside the music gave the six-hour sequence a sense of continuity that a conventional lineup might not necessarily create.
More Than a Night on the Dance Floor
Le Cirque conceived CIRCLE as more than just a night on the dance floor.
Selected live sets were recorded throughout the evening. That preserved parts of the night beyond the moment itself.
It also captured what Le Cirque described as the sound and spirit of the gathering.
For Jakarta’s underground scene, that documentation matters.
Underground communities are often built through moments that disappear as soon as the lights come on. A particular B2B. An unexpected track.
A room slowly filling up. A crowd that decides to stay until the very end.
CIRCLE attempted to turn those fleeting moments into something more lasting.
There were no grand headliner moments to carry the night.
Instead, there were six pairings, different musical identities, and a crowd willing to follow wherever the music went next.
Perhaps that is what made CIRCLE feel true to its name.
Different circles crossed paths, overlapped, and occasionally moved in unexpected directions, but ultimately remained part of the same whole.
And as the final records faded at 4 AM, some of the people who had entered the room six hours earlier were still there.
Still dancing.
Still inside the circle.
Cr: Maverick
A bunch of electronic dance music lovers who wants to share news from Indonesia to the world.