KhoMha, the brilliant, young, rising star of Coldharbour Records was playing at the Sullivan Room on a Friday in March in New York City. Being in town from San Francisco for A State of Trance 600 New York and looking for something to do, I decided to check him out. KhoMha was discovered at age 21 when he opened up for the legendary DJ Markus Schulz. The feedback I had heard of KhoMha was that he could be the next of King of Trance and even one day as big as Markus Schulz, so I decided to find out for myself if his live performance lived up to the hype.
(Picture courtesy of TranceInNY)
At 1 am the club was packed and it seemed like the crowd was just beginning to get alive like a bunch of zombies waking from the dead. That is when KhoMha took the stage. The other DJs had gotten polite cheers and mild applause but when KhoMha started playing the crowd exploded with approval and applause, roaring like a blood thirsty pack of Vikings.
KhoMha’s set was fresh and relentlessly energetic–constantly hammering the delighted, dancing and bouncing crowd with many unexpected, eye popping wondrous soundscapes that constantly left you breathlessly off guard and always guessing what was coming next. The crowd roared and screamed the whole time as though they were on a roller coaster at Magic Mountain, except here the magic was from the man KhoMha.
Building ever higher and higher, the DJ worked his fans into a boil of excitement, delivering a performance of increasing musical intensity exploding across the dance floor like visceral bombshells. The man at the DJ deck seemed possessed. Despite the club’s very small size, KhoMha’s music was grand, transcending the physical boundaries of all things and places, emotionally making you feel as though you had been transported into a huge arena show due to the ambitious, risk taking in his music.
The polyrhythmic complexities which frequently appeared in the set clearly show a twist of a modern, Latin, South American influence from KhoMha who was born in Medellin, Colombia. The fiery, intense set kept going long after the club closed at 4 am with the crowd begging for more. If the crowd had its way, the music would still have been playing after the sun came up.