Chapter

01

In Residence

Mystik, Seoul

Celebrating 12 of the world's best dance floors

In 2016, RA's In Residence series is celebrating club culture by throwing a month of parties at 12 of the world's best clubs. Clubs are the beating heart of dance music, and these are the venues that keep their local scenes thriving. Week-in, week-out, they open their doors to play the music we love.

As we settle in for a month at each of the clubs, we'll be running features that, through a combination of different media, aim to provide lasting documents of these iconic spaces.

We're heading to Mystik in Seoul for November. In a series that's visited some of the best-known dance floors in the world—Concrete, Robert Johnson, smartbar—Mystik may seem like an unusual choice for In Residence. But over the past five years, the club has been at the centre of Seoul's quietly blossoming scene. With its considered international bookings, increasingly impressive roster of residents and great soundsystem, Mystik is now one of Asia's best nightclubs.

Nov 3 RA In Residence, Mystik, Seoul feat. Dixon, DJ Moritz, Oviduct

Nov 12 RA In Residence, Mystik, Seoul feat. Moritz von Oswald, Suna, Seongsoo

Nov 19 RA In Residence, Mystik, Seoul feat. Wata Igarashi (live), Diskonnected, Unjin, Modus Tollens

Nov 25 RA In Residence, Mystik, Seoul feat. Binh, Antwork, Magico

Chapter

02

Key info

Mystik at a glance

01
Address
37 Itaewon-ro 27 ga-gil, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, South Korea
02
Club opened
2011
03
Soundsystem
Funktion-One
04
Capacity
170
05
Resident DJs
Magico, Antwork, Moritz, Oviduct, Seongsoo, Cy Nico, Alexa, Aain, Beathlon, Sin, Nukid, Oslon, Oliver Hafenbauer, Oskar Offermann, Romi Behl, DJ Masda
06
Music policy
All about electronic music

Chapter

03

History

The rise of Seoul

At about 8 AM on a Sunday morning in May, the Giegling artists Sa Pa and Ateq were finishing their set at Mystik in Seoul. The pair had been joined for the final couple of hours by one of the club's residents, Antwork, and together the DJs played deep, groovy house and techno (as well as some ambient) to a small and energetic crowd. It was the longest Mystik had stayed open in its five-year history, and for co-founder Dongyeul Kwak (who also goes by the name Steven), it set a high-water mark for the club.

"Those last couple of hours were so special," he recalls. "The music across the course of the night was really broad, and sometimes challenging, but the crowd stayed with them. Until 5 AM I'm usually quite busy, the club is crowded and it's hard to let go and really dive into the music. I like the place most and feel most comfortable when there's around 30 people left, enjoying those last few hours before dropping into bed."

When Mystik opened, in October of 2011, Seoul's dance music scene was dominated by EDM clubs offering VIP tables and bottle service. Kwak had seen the glamorisation of the city's nightlife first-hand. He'd worked at some of Seoul's biggest nightclubs in the mid-2000s, and had grown weary of what he describes as "a scene that was getting too commercial," where people would spend lavish sums of money on a night out.

"I decided to quit all of that and focus on what I really wanted to do," he says.

Kwak laid the groundwork for Mystik through a series of parties he hosted with a group of friends, which took place around the Itaewon area in 2009. These roughly happened monthly, with local DJs who wanted to play deeper and darker shades of house and techno than was permitted in most of Seoul's other nightclubs. The parties were a success, but soon Kwak and co. were struggling to find a reliable venue. Around this time they met Eddie Yoo. "He saw what we were doing, he believed in us, and he trusted us, then he became our investor," Kwak says. This investment was used to open Mystik.

The club's interior is notable for what isn't there. There are no VIP tables and no glossy décor. What's left is small (the capacity is 170) and simple: black walls, a dance floor, a bar, Funktion-One speakers and long, pulsating strip lights. The club is located in a back-alley in Itaewon, a busy, westernised part of Seoul close to the city's main U.S. Army base. Mystik wasn't the first underground venue to open in Seoul—a previous wave of clubs existed in the Hongdae area during the late '90s and 2000s, including Joker Red, Via, Club Tool, Mata Mata and Club MWG. (MWG is the only one that's still open.) But Mystik's arrival signalled a re-emergence of underground venues in the city.

From the moment it opened, the club had a clear vision that appealed to the city's small house and techno community. Its soundsystem is one of—if not the—finest-tuned rigs in the city. In Mystik's early days there was a focus on minimal house, but that has expanded to incorporate a more diverse range of DJs and live acts. Fred P, DJ Masda, Boris, Resom, Prosumer, Mr. G, Lena Willikens and Portable have all played there in 2016.

At the heart of Mystik is Kwak, who's the kind of person who could keep a venue afloat through sheer energy and enthusiasm. In addition to being one of the club's founders, he's the booker (alongside one of the resident DJs, Moritz) and looks after international guests. He also spent four years working on the door. "Steven is like a family member to me now," says Oliver Hafenbauer, a resident at Mystik who plays every eight months. Hafenbauer knows a thing or two about good nightclubs: he's also a resident DJ and music director at Offenbach's revered Robert Johnson. (RA's In Residence series visited Robert Johnson in May.)

"At first I was surprised the crowd responded so enthusiastically to all kinds of music I played, from Detroit techno to bleepy classics," Hafenbauer says. "I wasn't expecting such open-minded dancers, because the scene in South Korea is still pretty young. It's a club with a strict programming policy and door selection. That wasn't common in Seoul when they started. I love Mystik because they give the guest DJs a chance to play a long set until the early morning. It relaxes me a lot when I know I can switch between dance music genres in one set, plus the people enjoy it until the very last record."

The club welcomes regular international guests, but there's also a focus on local artists. "We want to strengthen the local scene and try to help up-and-coming talent," says Kwak. The club started a monthly night called Alright Alnight, which is devoted to pushing local DJs. Hafenbauer mentions two residents, Magico and Antwork, with "having the courage to play nerdy minimal stuff." Kwak proudly tells me they've been booked to play in Japan, Taipei and Hanoi later in 2016. "I met Magico and Antwork in 2007," Kwak recalls. "They didn't play music back then, but I saw them again in Mystik when we'd just opened. They just came to listen to music every weekend. Friday, Saturday, Friday, Saturday—all the time. And then maybe five months after we opened, they just talked to me, and said, 'We want to play music here.' I didn't know they played music. So I just asked them, 'What? Are you DJs?' And they said they'd been practicing for a couple of years. We gave them a chance to play in Mystik on a Thursday, when it was a bit quieter. They played fucking amazing music that night. So we made them resident DJs."

The club has had a galvanizing effect on Seoul's scene. In 2016 things look healthy for the city's emerging network of nightclubs, with spots like Cakeshop, vurt, Pistil, Midnight, Alley Sound, Seendosi, Constant Value, Faust and MWG pushing all kinds of sounds. "It's totally different these days," Kwak says. "There's currently like four or five small underground clubs, and they're doing only what they want to do. Some clubs just play techno, some clubs just play hip-hop, and they don't give a shit about money."

In April, Seoul's first dance music record store, Clique Records, opened, and Seoul Community Radio, an online station inspired by the likes of NTS and Berlin Community Radio, is now on the air. "Our aim for SCR is to help Korean underground talent meet new global audiences and combine that with the best of what is happening internationally to support the fantastic growing scene here," said station founder Richard Price when the station launched in June.

"Seoul's electronic music scene has come a long way, and now an infrastructure for diverse scenes is in place," says Udo Lee, a local curator, magazine maker and DJ. "With the latest additions of Clique Records and Seoul Community Radio, it seems this status has solidified quite a lot. Even when the EDM boom dies out, there will be a healthy underground scene that mostly cares about the music."

Mystik still faces challenges. In the time since it opened, the Itaweon area has changed dramatically. "Back in 2011, Itaewon appealed to just a few DJs and clubbers," Kwak says. "Within a couple of years, the area became very hyped—it was in the media, on TV shows. Then people just started coming to this area just to drink and get fucked up. There were people who didn't come for the music." These changes have forced Mystik to employ a stricter door policy, something Kwak says has gotten him into "about 30 fights."

Kwak is also conscious that, as Seoul's scene grows, it's important for it not to blindly follow successful clubbing cities elsewhere in the world. "Here is Seoul, and there is Europe, you know? It's a totally different culture, and totally different people. There is some overlap—it is all about music, after all—but some clubs seem to think, if we copy, say, Panorama Bar…." He trails off. "They cannot be Panorama Bar."

But things at Mystik continue to look promising. The Giegling party's record late finish was recently surpassed by an event featuring Z@p, Antwork and Magico, which went until 10 AM. "This year has been a turning point," says Kwak. "Parties are going longer than ever before, which is a great thing to witness. And everyone is super connected to the music."

For all his work with local and international DJs, the thing that pleases Kwak most is how the crowd at Mystik has evolved. "I'm always watching who's on the dance floor, and now I'm meeting a new generation of DJs that way," Kwak says. "There's this one guy, he's always there for our special nights. Always. But he's not very social, he's very quiet, but he dances crazily until the end, and then he just leaves. One day I just asked him, 'Are you a DJ?' And he said yes. I asked where he was playing, and he said he was a DJ at some commercial club, but he's trying to expand his horizons. There are so many young, talented artists, and that's the best thing about Seoul's scene right now. But we're still at the starting point."

Chapter

04

Residents

...in pictures

Chapter

05

Character profile

Seongsoo

Resident DJ

There are a few examples of people who held down jobs at nightclubs before becoming a resident DJ. Lena Willikens worked as a bouncer at Dusseldorf's Salon Des Amateurs, while The Black Madonna was a booker at Smart Bar before she started bossing the Chicago club's dance floor. In the case of Mystik's Seongsoo, he worked as the venue's in-house photographer before, in May of 2016, he took up a regular slot behind the decks. Though he had no experience DJing in a club, Seongsoo was prepared for his new role. As the club's photographer, he watched, listened and learned from other DJs every weekend for four years.

There's another thing that's informed his DJ style, though in a less direct way. By day, Seongsoo runs a printing label, Pressworks, with his friend DJ Chiman. "His studio is located in Seoul's oldest printing district, Chungmuro," explains Steven Kwak. "Around there, you can hear the noises of the rusty printing presses and the machines in the neighbouring factories. He's constantly surrounded by these industrial sounds, day and night."

Seongsoo finds no shortage of inspiration in the historic streets of Chungmuro, which have long been a hub for Korean film, photography and printing, though much of the city's film industry decamped to Gangnam in the '90s. Countless electrical wires form a tangled web above the district's narrow alleys, where motorbikes laden with deliveries zip between studios and factories. These days, the threat of demolition hangs over Chungmuro, which has inspired Seongsoo to document the area's rich history before it disappears. For him, Chungmuro's enduring appeal is its position at the intersection of industrial graft and creative spark. "You can hear Chungmuro in his DJ sets," says Kwak. "It's no wonder he became a techno DJ."

Chapter

06

Soundsystem profile

Funktion-One

"There are many different reasons to go to a nightclub," says DJ Oviduct, one of Mystik's resident DJs. "But if you're guaranteed a good soundsystem with good music, all of the other reasons are secondary."

This ideal has been a driving force behind Mystik since day one. It's a small club—the floor space is roughly 125 square metres—with Funktion-One speakers (RES4 tops and an F218 sub). "There are two reasons that we chose Funktion-One," explains Steven Kwak. "First, the bass is solid, and second, no matter how long you stay in the club, the music won't hurt your ears." He adds: "Our soundsystem goes well with the space itself. It has the ability to embrace many genres of electronic music—not just house and techno—as well as the flow of each DJ set. It all goes together organically."

When it opened, Mystik developed a reputation for its soundsystem. But when the club was recently renovated, Kwak and co. took the opportunity to make changes. "We tore down all the sound-absorbing materials and made the walls exposed concrete," Kwak says. The changes made a big difference. "Before the renovation, Mystik was neatly covered from low to high frequencies, kind of like a comfy studio," he says. "Now our sound is more techno-centred—we wanted it a bit rougher." It was a risk, but it's a move that Kwak feels has paid off. "Of course we understand there are pros and cons. Some people miss the old sound—the comfortable, warm feeling evenly distributed to every corner of the club. But there's something wonderfully raw, almost primal, about the sound in Mystik now."

Chapter

07

Mixes

The music of Mystik

Magico and Antwork in the mix

Mystik is a haven for deep, minimal strands of house and techno. These mixes come from residents who specialise in that style: Magico and Antwork. Magico's mix was a home-recorded affair—"I threw myself into my records and digital tracks with a fresh and careful vision," he says—while Antwork's hour-long set was captured live at a recent edition of the monthly Voice party.

"I'm grateful to share this mix with music lovers all around the world," Magico adds. "And especially with my friends and those at Mystik who have never stopped being supportive."

Still haven't got your Mystik fix? You can visit its club profile here, and there's more information on the series via the dedicated In Residence page.