PARTY2012 is a hybrid online and offline collective of musicians and DJs who began performing via Plug.dj in January of 2014. Upbeat and eclectic, PARTY2012 has been going strong for nearly 10 years, and hopefully has many more years of shows to come.
Ahead of their BEACHPARTY2012 show, I got the chance to conduct a text interview with two founding members and two main personnel of PARTY2012: Mike DeBisco, Zovi, Sophia, and Pea.
When did PARTY2012 start?
Zovi: In 2014, of course.
Mike: PARTY2012 was officially founded January 2014 in a cramped college dorm on a little site known as plug.dj.
Sophia: Our first event was for NYE in 2014.
What would you say are the core values of PARTY2012? What distinguishes this collective from others like it?
Zovi: Eclectic variety is very important to me. PARTY2012 often has artists who wouldn’t normally be on the same lineup, and I think that is a special thing about us in the realm of online dance music events in particular, where things are often more genre-focused. Also, going hard with at-least-somewhat silly theming is also a core PARTY2012 thing, imo! I think the high effort put into bizarre themes featuring high quality artists doing whatever they want for 30 minutes is the PARTY2012 formula that makes it unique. You know, that’s how we describe what we want when an artist asks. “You get 30 minutes to do what you want.” That freedom has resulted in anything from DJ sets to avant-garde short films as sets.
Mike: We value diversity and inclusivity and always aim to book LGBTQA+ and PoC artists as often as possible. We also strive to give every performer an equal opportunity to shine during our events, plugging their social media during their sets and encouraging people to type “2012” in the chat to cheer them on. It’s a bit of a takeaway from SPF420’s “type 420 in the chat” and I always loved how Liz and Chaz would hype everyone up during their shows, haha.
Like Zovi mentioned, what distinguishes our collective from others is the fact that we have a bit of an open format when it comes to 30 minute “sets”. We also love audience participation and encourage our viewers to do all sorts of wacky things including helping us defeat an evil version of David by spamming commands in the Twitch chat or attempting to play along to a custom made Stepmania pack.
Sophia: A more eclectic multi-genre and interdisciplinary approach to booking and A&R. We don’t only book rave dj’s and we don’t only book established acts, and we don’t only book lineups of our friends. It’s inevitable we will book some people we like, but something we try to remain conscious of is being cliquey. Also, we aren’t self-serious. We have a funny theme every time and fully take the piss out of the whole thing- if the name PARTY2012 didn’t make that obvious enough. PARTY2012 is also run by a team of 100% queer people, so we also make it a point to book queer and nonwhite artists for every single event.
Pea: It’s all about new and upcoming talents. We love the element of surprise when an invited guest who might never have done a show yet gets to showcase some of the most mind-blowing acts we’ve ever witnessed. Variety takes a huge part of our philosophy, so much so that it should be PARTY2012’s middle name… PARTY “Variety” 2012, rolls right off the tongue.
Tell me about SPF420 and how it influenced PARTY2012.
Mike: PARTY2012 owes its very existence to SPF420! Liz and Chaz laid the foundation for online festivals with their innovative, DIY gatherings on TinyChat, where they showcased prominent figures from the realms of future bass, hyperpop, and vaporwave.
After attending one of their shows in December 2013 featuring renowned chiptune rock band Anamanaguchi, I felt particularly inspired to start my own event and SPF420 served as the catalyst for what would be known as “PARTY 2012!” at the time.
Fast forward to November 2020, we had the tremendous honor of inviting Chaz to perform at BLOCKPARTY2012 in Roblox as a thank you for inspiring us throughout the years. It was a remarkable moment of coming full circle and a testament to the enduring influence of SPF420 on our creative journey!
Sophia: I wasn’t as involved with the backend of things earlier on, and these are conversations we were having almost an entire decade ago in fall of 2013, but from what I remember… Mike was fed up with other URL collectives [online rave groups] not giving any of us a serious chance, so we decided to plan and host our own URL rave from the ground up. It was almost entirely modeled after those SPF420 TinyChat shows though. They were such a huge inspiration for us. DeBisco and I would get so excited and tune in for every single show we could get to and we’d be messaging each other over Facebook the entire time like “WOW. DID YOU HEAR THAT? THIS IS INCREDIBLE… I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY GOT TONY HAWK TO DO A DJ SET…”
What was the very first show like?
Zovi: Ah yes, when it was stylized “PARTY 2012!” Plug.dj didnt really have anything like it prior, so it was like a novelty, but also a successful one! Great sets and lovely energy in the chat was what I remember. DeBisco ran that one, and it went so well that they decided to do it again for the first “POOL PARTY 2012” (we got rid of the spaces after that) where I was brought on to help run it.
Mike: “PARTY 2012!” was definitely the first of its kind on plug.dj! We had a rather impressive lineup featuring Saint Pepsi, JAKAZiD, McMaNGOS and Sophiaaaahjkl;8901 (fka Mega Bunneh), among many others. At the time, PARTY2012 had no real branding and was heavily influenced by the vaporwave community hence why Michelangelo’s David served as our unofficial “mascot” on the poster. (laughs)
Sophia: It was a MESS at least on my end. It was my first winter break home from college and my family was really excited to see me instead, I spent the entire time hammering away at a video mixtape in my bedroom. It ended up suffering a catastrophic exporting error that left it unable to be sent over in time for the event. It took me another week to fix it, and upload it quietly to my own YouTube page without fanfare. Ethernt’s set was real, real good though.
Pea: I have an outsider’s perspective on witnessing PARTY2012’s first event. I’ve seen a poster of the first event on (I think) a Twitter post and thought “Wow, I didn’t think of online events. I could simply go there if I wanted to!” Unfortunately, I didn’t, but I caught up with the group’s second event (POOL PARTY 2012) and fell in love ever since.
If I may be honest (and the others here may not know about this), PARTY2012 has been a huge inspiration for me to do DJing as a hobby and to do shows, playing various genres of music to wow anyone and everyone listening. It was on my bucket list for the longest time to even just play a show for them, and look where I am now!
What are some memorable moments from the shows over the years?
Zovi: I’ve been the streamer and “live viz” for most of them in the Twitch era, so a lot of PARTY2012’s for me have been a blur at the actual events due to how much I’m doing in the moment. I really love when there are joke sets though because chat goes nuts for them. BLOCKPARTY2012 (2020) had a lot of great moments in particular because of the Minecraft and Roblox immersion. Plus, we cannot forget about every show ending: all 49 minutes of The Facebook of Sex by Dead on SoundCloud, aka “buck bumble”. Shoutout to the people determined to stay to the end every time, it’s always a good afterparty feeling.
Mike: We’ve had a lot of memorable moments over the years but PARTY2012 IRL personally holds the most meaning to me. PARTY2012 IRL was conceptualized during my senior year of college in May 2015 and after securing an iconic date of 20, November at Babycastles in NYC, we immediately began working on solidifying a lineup. PARTY2012 IRL proved to be one of our most successful live events to date, selling out in just 10 minutes with an all-star lineup composed of Maxo, Mitomoro, Sophia, sc.Dave, Adil, Zovi, myself and Akira Complex (RIP ❤).
Since then, PARTY2012 has returned IRL with MAGPARTY2012 at MAGFest 2017 in National Harbor, MD, and OTAKUPARTY2012 at Otakuthon 2019 in Montreal, Quebec with each show being even more ambitious than the last!
Sophia: The best thing to ever happen at PARTY2012 was in the summer of 2016 when sleepyXTRA duped the entire 2012 Team by lying about the set they were going to be playing. They instead recorded an entire absurdist comedy short film and used POOLPARTY2012 as a venue to premiere it to the world. Chat was going insane, the Team group chat was going insane, they had fooled everyone except for me… who had been a man on the inside the entire time.
Pea: During BLOCKPARTY2012, I opened up a Minecraft moshpit during my set and crashed the stream as a result and I thought that was really funny.
Also, I had the opportunity to stream and do the viz for some of my favorite events, PLUNDERPARTY2012 and ISLANDPARTY2012, especially the former one. The chat went wild by the end and I was able to provide moments that I hold dear to my heart to this day.
What do you think has changed the most over the course of 10 years?
Zovi: The move to Twitch changed PARTY2012’s format for the better. It started as just a flyer and DJ sets and now it’s this whole multimedia experience!
Mike: Agreed. Twitch definitely helped us expand our audience and gave us the ability to transform PARTY2012 into a fully interactive experience.
Sophia: The entire URL scene, the entire way we operate, the platforms we use for our streams, literally everything has changed. 2020 definitely legitimized what we’d been doing in a lot of people’s eyes. People take us more seriously now, but also nobody knows we’ve been doing this for so long. Every new person I meet assumes we started it up because of the pandemic. People don’t know that URL raves have been happening since the 90’s. More has changed in the past three years of operating than the previous seven.
What was your personal favorite show to play?
Zovi: PIZZAPOOLPARTY2012 (2020) was mostly my brainchild, and I’m very pleased with all I did for it, so I’m partial to that one. Originally this was a joke theme I kept bringing up for an IRL event where we would have actual soggy pizzas floating in inflatable pools throughout the venue. But eventually, I realized I could just simulate this with LEGO, and the online version was born. I built a whole LEGO pool party, complete with 30 pizzas in the pool, and that was the visuals. For my own set, I made a mega mashup of pizza-related songs for the first third. Then the pirates showed up for revenge, as promised in my PLUNDERPARTY2012 “set”. I built a whole custom LEGO pirate ship for this. Pirate metal / hardcore techno mashups ensued. Then the pirates and pizza melded in the last third. It was perhaps my best mashup/hardcore-combo-type DJ set to date, and I think other people had as much fun as I did!
Mike: PARTY2012 IRL holds a special place in my heart but BLOCKPARTY2012 was probably the most fun we’ve ever had together. The whole thing was nuts. None of us had ever organized a show in Minecraft or Roblox before so we modeled it after the success of OpenPit’s events. There wasn’t much to do during lockdown so many of us had free time to spend crafting both worlds for a two-day event complete with its own scavenger hunt for real prizes! I was also honored to have M-Project as our headliner for Minecraft Night. While he couldn’t be there in attendance, the entire server was going wild for him the entire time all the way across the globe.
Sophia: BLOCKPARTY2012 WITHOUT A DOUBT!! It was also easily the most stressful event we’ve ever put on LOL. To date, It’s still the only PARTY2012 we’ve ever put on that was two nights in a row… We had to spread the team in half and bring on a lot more help than usual because we had to manage twice as many artists and actually make an entire world in Minecraft and Roblox each. We all decided we never wanted to do a two-night event ever again, but whenever I think of P2012, my first thought is always jumping around on the stage in Minecraft and trying to complete that scavenger hunt while listening to Whitetail play out her DJ set of all original remixes.
Pea: Ah man, there are so many good ones. I want to say OTAKUPARTY2012 because of the sheer effort I put into organizing it. A lot of rocky moments behind the scenes, but it culminated into a huge blast come event day. If we’re talking strictly URL-only events, I want to say RPGPARTY2012 because of how hyped the chat and I were, considering that my set was as aggro as possible.
How did the pandemic affect how PARTY2012 played shows?
Mike: The pandemic was both a blessing and a curse for us. On one hand, all live shows were paused during the lockdown, and on the other hand, it brought us closer together through live streams and as a result, some of our most ambitious projects were produced during its peak.
Sophia: Not at all LOL, it just gave us the chance to put on way more events that year. We usually put on two, but because everyone was already inside and needed the distraction we did twice as many.
Pea: URL events are now much more commonplace today due to a certain worldwide event. People took notice, and now we get to see much more events out there, but not necessarily like ours. More podcasts, more periodic shows, more parties, but none of them, I feel, have been as unique as ours. These other shows are great too, don’t get me wrong, but I still think that we’ve asserted a unique identity that distinguishes our events from others.
What is the vibe you want to achieve for BEACHPARTY2012?
Mike: BEACHPARTY2012 is a bit of a return to form. Our first POOLPARTY2012 event (known as POOL PARTY 2012 with spaces at the time) was one of many summer-themed shows that we’ve had over the years and eventually, we began to stray away from this concept introducing everything from COOLPARTY2012 to COSTUMEPARTY2012. I think it’s refreshing to have a chill summer-themed event again and I hope you can all come out to it!
Sophia: Beach party, but grimy. The way that people who actually live in beach cities and touristy towns feel about the beach. It’s dirty, it stinks, It wears down everything built close to it. But it’s incredibly beautiful too.
Pea: dj jumpscare took my slot and he will pay for this
Will you ever rebrand to PARTY2022??
Mike: It’s always 2012.
Sophia: I could never!!! I like the pink and blue font and David too much to change those. But it might be cute to have some official David illustrations to use. Like, make him a true mascot with a Hello Kitty sort of vibe…
Pea: 2012 is forever.
What do you want to do next?
Mike: Zovi and I have discussed the option of doing some sort of outlandish gallery event with fully interactive installations and I would personally love to see something like this come into fruition! Our initial goal for PARTY2012 was to bring the URL to the IRL and I think we’ve succeeded in doing so, but we want to expand on that concept and I’m excited for what’s to come.
Sophia: A full venue in 3D space in VRChat with events more than semiannually has been my biggest 2012 fantasy for the past 2 years or so now.
BEACHPARTY2012 will be held on August 12th, 2023 via their Twitch stream, located at https://www.twitch.tv/party2012url
