Bryce Alakai’s night at Webster Hall said something about what reality television can do to a crowd. The queue stretched down the block and then around another, on a Friday night in September, for a 30-year-old who had been known to the wider world for all of three months. Behind the decks, Alakai, whose full legal name is Bryce Dettloff, according to the Love Island Wiki, played a set that moved between melodic house and tech house, threading in well-known tracks from Tame Impala, The Dare and Soulja Boy.
From Avalon Hollywood to Bryce Alakai at Webster Hall
The New York show was not the beginning of this run. Peacock TV reports that Alakai launched his post-show national DJ tour with a sold-out performance at Avalon Hollywood before heading east. By the time he walked into Webster Hall on the night in question, he counted it as his fourth show of the run, and each one, he said, had been different. The previous evening at Elsewhere in Brooklyn had produced a crowd he described as genuinely wild. New York, he said, goes crazy. So does L.A.
Alakai spent six years living in New York, having moved there at 17. Walking into the venue and seeing the line stretch around the block, he said, felt surreal in a way that was specific to this city. He told GQ before taking the stage: ‘This is insane. I love New York. I feel like this is where I kind of became an adult.’
A sound built on melodic house and years of grinding
The music career runs deeper than three months. Alakai says he has been involved in music since childhood, playing trombone as a kid before moving into production at 18 and then into DJing while living in Los Angeles. He took it seriously from the age of 24, working at it every day, funding the early years of it with handyman work, including shifts on garbage trucks. His first DJing gigs paid around 150 dollars, and he would spend what he earned on video content rather than taking it home.
He describes his sound as sitting in a grey area between melodic house and tech house: ‘music to drive to after a breakup,’ though he acknowledges it has been shifting toward club material. His inspirations lean melodic. He cited Flume, and noted that he had met Chris Lake just hours before the Webster Hall show, calling him one of his biggest inspirations and one of the best house producers working.
One track that predates his Love Island appearance by some time nearly passed him by entirely. A remix he made of Ty Dolla $ign’s ‘Blasé’ ended up being played at Coachella after a friend who tours with Ty Dolla $ign passed it along. Alakai went into the villa and forgot he had made it. When he came out, Ariana Madix told him the track was going crazy. He looked at TikTok and had to remind himself what it was.
On stage at Webster Hall, the night reached its loudest when his girlfriend Trinity Tatum joined him behind the decks. NSYNC’s JC Chasez made a surprise appearance, and Tyler Kolek and Miles McBride of the New York Knicks came up too, a crossover that the crowd received accordingly. A large portion of Alakai’s Love Island castmates were present, there partly for New York Fashion Week and partly to film the Peacock spin-off Beyond the Villa, dancing in the VIP area through the set.
Alakai said the cast’s presence mattered to him beyond the spectacle of it. ‘I don’t know where our lives are going to go in the next six months,’ he told GQ, ‘so I wanted us at least to have this to bring everyone together.’
Tatum, he said, is his lucky charm at shows. With the winner’s prize money from Love Island, the first thing he bought was a Louis Vuitton purse for her, as soon as the money cleared. He had been nervous to play her his music at all, knowing how central it is to him. She is, he said, a house head now. Everything’s great.
Pre-show, he admitted, involves dry-heaving and a lot of anxiety. That, he said, is what gets him focused. The marker of a good show is simpler: if the vibe is high at the end, he figures they did their thing.
