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Hear it now
Press play.
This is BALIMORE — written, produced and mixed by Steven Ran Cohen. Full tracks, no sign-up, no download. Four minutes is enough to know whether this is your sound.
- Tempo
- 118 – 124 BPM
- Energy ceiling
- ~60% of peak
- Records
- Longer, flatter
- Mistake
- Playing your best track
The job
A warm-up set is not a short headline set. The job is to deliver a room that is warm, present and not yet satisfied to whoever plays next. Everything about how you build it follows from that.
Four rules
Stay under the tempo. 118 to 124, and do not creep. If you hand over at 130 the next DJ has to either start above their own plan or drop the tempo audibly, and both cost the room.
Keep a ceiling on energy. Roughly sixty per cent of what the night will reach. Not because sixty per cent is pleasant, but because a room that peaked at 1am has nothing left at 3am — and the person who did that is the opener, not the headliner.
Longer, flatter records. Eight-minute tracks with few events. You are establishing a state, not creating moments. Moments later will feel larger for having had none yet.
Do not play your best track. This is the rule everyone breaks, usually when the floor finally fills and the temptation is overwhelming. The record you most want to play is almost always the one that belongs to the slot after yours.
Why it is harder than headlining
A headliner plays to a room that already wants it, with an hour of groundwork done and permission to use every tool. An opener plays to a half-empty room with the strongest tools forbidden, and gets judged on something — the state of the floor at handover — that nobody in the room is consciously tracking.
Try it right now
The player at the top of this page is BALIMORE — written, produced and mixed by Steven Ran Cohen. Free, no sign-up, and the sets run long enough to actually test any of the above.
BALIMORE sets
Continuous 20–80 minute mixes, written, produced and mixed by Steven Ran Cohen.
- Best Hits Psytrance 2027 — The Last Light1:20 · psytrance
- No Borders After Darkafro & latin
- Techno House Best Mix 2026 — Project Xpeak time
- Tech House Mix — Time To Shine Againtech house
- YouTubeplaylist
Questions people actually ask
What is a warm-up set?
The opening set of a night. The goal is to deliver a warm, present but unsatisfied room to the next DJ — which means staying below the night's tempo and energy ceiling rather than playing a compressed headline set.
What tempo should a warm-up set be?
Usually 118 to 124 BPM, held steady rather than creeping upward, so the next DJ can start at their own planned tempo without an audible drop.
Why should an opener not play their best tracks?
Because a room that peaks at 1am has nothing left at 3am. The record an opener most wants to play usually belongs to the following slot.
Why is opening considered harder than headlining?
The strongest tools are off limits, the room is not yet committed, and the result being judged — the state of the floor at handover — is something nobody in the room is consciously watching.