There are mortals, and then there is DJ Harvey—high priest of the all-night communion, unkillable emissary of hedonism, the man who once declared that a good set is better than sex and then proved it, decade after decade. In the world of electronic music, Harvey is less a DJ and more a living myth, the guy who smuggled Paradise Garage sensibilities across the Atlantic, pressed contraband disco edits on reel-to-reel tape, then vanished to Hawai'i to build a nightclub with a custom sound system like a 21st-century Dionysus on sabbatical. His resume reads like a novel you’d roll your eyes at if it weren’t entirely true: punk drummer at 13, graffiti crew ringleader by 18, Ministry of Sound graveyard-shift selector in the 1990s, outlaw edits merchant under the Black Cock moniker, leader of psychedelic rock bands (Map of Africa, DJ Harvey's Wildest Dreams), and now, prophet of Balearic bliss at his Mercury Rising nights in Ibiza.

Hedonism is Harvey’s lingua franca. Not the blunt-force kind that burns out in a season, but the slower, stickier form that turns into lifestyle. His sets stretch into the double digits not because of gimmick, but because he’s constitutionally wired for excess. If a party is meant to end, Harvey will find the crack in time where it refuses to. He is a globalist in the oldest, most decadent sense: pulling sounds from punk 45s, Italo disco obscurities, Larry Levan’s canon, Afrobeat cassettes, surf-pop anthems. The glue is Harvey himself, filtering everything through a philosophy that says, essentially, life is short, music is infinite, why not devour both?

Even the birds become allegories under Harvey’s watch. Magpie, the single off DJ Harvey's Wildest Dreams’ newest EP High Performance, isn’t a metaphor to be solved so much as a sly nod to the collector’s instinct that has defined him all along. The magpie is the Easter egg; the jackdaw, his real childhood companion in the English countryside, the totem. Like these birds, Harvey scavenges glitter from everywhere—absolutely “fucking everywhere,” he says—and assembles it into something gaudy, shimmering, and, against all logic, eternal.

Call him a DJ, a myth, a global ambassador for decadence. It makes no difference. DJ Harvey doesn’t live in the commoner’s sphere. He lives in the endless night of the dancefloor, where time bends, cigarettes still burn on airplanes, and hedonism is the only politics that matter.

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Are there any new innovations out there in recording that scratch your itch at present? Any used on the new EP?

I’m enjoying the fact that AI completely allows you to deconstruct music and re-arrange it as you see fit.

‍You're all over the world playing gigs. What is a welcome change you've witnessed in travel culture recently? What's something gone you wish wasn't?

I honestly don’t see any welcome changes whatsoever, but I do miss being able to have a cigarette on the plane.

‍What's special about LA queer culture to you?

When most people think of California queer culture, San Francisco is the first city that comes to mind. But for me, Los Angeles has a long and colorful history of gay culture, let alone West Hollywood. Off the top of my head, Jewel’s Catch One is one of the earlier black female queer-owned spaces; the Probe, Akbar, an Eagle Outpost, the Tom of Finland House, as well as The Black Cat ‘round the corner. With my well known love of motorcycles, I would like to show respect to Satyrs M/C.

‍Any little secrets or what you might call "Easter eggs" on the EP?

Magpie itself is the Easter egg.

‍In recent years, LA has endured a pandemic, a screeching halt to film and TV production, the Palisades and Altadena fires, ICE raids... it's not all sunshine. How do you see LA enduring through it all? Or do you?

If you look at London during the Blitz, it was considered to be the finest hour in terms of bringing people together. If anything this all will (I hope) unite the people of LA, I’ve seen it first hand already post-fires.

‍Describe your relationship with the magpie?

When I was a kid growing up in the English countryside we would see magpies out in the fields, but I actually have more of an affinity with the jackdaw.

‍Where are you finding inspiration these days?

Sometimes here, sometimes there. Honestly? Absolutely fucking everywhere. I don’t go somewhere specific to be inspired. It can be and is absolutely anything, anywhere, anytime.