CONCRETE: INSIDE. JUNE 2026.
The wind whirs in your ears. Amidst the pale dunes stand several concrete monoliths towering at great heights. Something calls to you to come inside, to see its wonder. You walk, each step followed by the soft sounds of sand pooling under your feet. What a journey ahead to see the wonder awaiting you. Faintly, in the distance, haunting strings and an offtune piano sing a melody, a melody that leads you to the heart of one of these monolithgs. With anticipation, you follow.
You feel as if you have woken up from a dream. Blinking blearily, your eyes focus on where you are. The space inside this monolith is immense, the structure made entirely of cold concrete, large pillars going this way and that, rooms and hallways filled with nothing but air. Surely there are others here, you think. You hear that melody again. You follow.
A cloudy portal sends you to a staircase, bringing you deeper into the monolith. The melody sings loud and clear here. Going deeper and deeper, you find yourself before a crystalized tree and a room full of people. The music thrums and reaches its high, the crowd throwing themselves to the sounds echoing in this room. An emissive creature rises from the floor, standing to its full height over the crowd. The crowd cheers, arms reaching upwards as if wanting to hold the creature in their arms. The creature bends and twists its form, the colors of the lights emitting it changing in tune to the music.
The creature speaks in your mind.Welcome home, traveler.
picture taken by justjaime
Last month I had the great privilege to play at Concrete: Inside at the invitation of their staff. I have gushed about Concrete as a venue and community several times in my VRBlog, and to be able to play music here was definitely an honor. On top of that, Jerk controlled the creature during my set, casting the room with beautiful hues of color and interesting, abstract shapes. It felt as if the creature danced with myself and the crowd.
Curating this set was incredibly important to me as I wanted to get the vibe right for this event. I wanted to open with Josef Tumari's YUGUR, a mystical sounding electro track that reminds me of travelling through the dunes. I ended up playing an eerie melody before this track, though, a track from deerseekers called Human Falls. Lastly, I knew I wanted to highlight a friend of mine named Xia with her flip of the Jujutsu Kaisen OST, named Domain Expansion (Delirious Flip). With these tracks in mind, I then dug into the hyptnoic, dub techno that I had on hand. The inspirations behind the sounds that I prefer are DJs and producers such as Juan Atkins, D.Dan, and Sama Abdulhadi. All three of these individuals indulge in sounds that are otherworldly, spacey, and have a consistent, building progression.
➜ Juan Atkins is an artist, producer, and DJ who was part of the Belleville Three with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson. Some of my favorite tracks from him are Transport and Zeolites from the album Transport with Moritz van Oswald.
➜ D.Dan, who is also from Seattle like myself, is another artist, producer, and DJ deeply entangled with hypnotic yet fast techno. The set that inspired me the most from him has got to be his Boiler Room x Instytut Festival set in 2021. D.Dan is patient with building his transitions, and when they happen, it feels explosive and out of nowhere.
➜ Sama Abdulhadi is a Palestinian artist and DJ who I also found through a Boiler Room set, specifically the one that she did in 2018 in Palestine. Every set of hers that I've listened to feels like a story and a journey. Another set that she did had a recording of her father speaking. The emotional aspect of her sets is unmatchable.
picture taken by justjaime
The theme of this evening was to wear latex, and while I was there, many people had changed the materials of their avatars' clothing items to match said theme. With the theme in mind, I wanted to play music that made me feel sexy but also echoed sentiments of being around higher beings. The presence of the creature haunting the halls inside made me think of how I could possibly make my set more colorful.
Color is present in the crowd and audience as well. The people who come to these events are more than excited to dance their hearts out on the dancefloor and they do so without abandon. I looked around and I saw people waving their arms and kicking out with their legs, couples dancing intimately, friends getting into circles and laughing at each others' movements. The people who attend these events are ready to have a good time, either by themselves or with others. There's a mutual understanding within the crowd that the music is the forefront of the event, but up right there with it is the shared joy that is generated from it.
picture taken by mojopeg
CONCRETE: INSIDE reminds me very much of the inside of the Szczecin Philharmonic Hall in Poland. The tall, expansive ceilings and the monotone color scheme of the inside allowing visuals to be bright and emissive. The DJ decks are also level with the crowd, so people can come a little closer than they would
the inside of the szczecin philharmonic concert hall
Being inside this venue reminded me of the set that D.Dan did in the Szczecin Philharmonic Hall for the ARTE Concert in January, 2025. Beams and spatters of light were painting the air while people danced closely with one another or by themselves, absorbed completely by the music and each other.
I have raved on about CONCRETE for several entries in my virtual reality blog, but I can never give this place enough love and credit for what they give to the VRChat community. For a lot of people, CONCRETE is one of the first fully immsersive music and visual events they experience in VRChat. For me, it was one of the first places that I saw utilize video player screens used over large planes, with the VJs projecting visuals on several different layers instead of just one. The unique shapes of the visuals are lovingly called "the creature" by the CONCRETE community. Each VJ that has participated for the CONCRETE events has their own iteration of the creature, making each experience completely one of a kind each time.
For my set, Jerk was at the helm for taming the creature. I absolutely loved how in the beginning of my set, the room was dark, only hit ablaze by flashes of color when I finally let the first techno track play out. The creature rose and fell with each melody and each drop, and I felt in sync with them throughout the night.
Seeing everyone's outfits reflect the shine of the creature was also breathtaking.
picture taken by justjaime
picture taken by mojopeg