Lesson of the day – whenever you see the words “in association with” at the start of an article, especially where the name of who wrote it typically appears, beware. This is essentially an euphemism for “they sent us this rubbish and said they’d pay us lots of money to publish it”. Such is the case with this article on Mixmag’s site, all about a five-day event called Departure.

It’s due to take place at Playa Del Carmen in Mexico from January 6th – 11th next year. And if when you heard the name Playa Del Carmen and thought this sounds familar, that’s because it is. It’s in the state of Quintana Roo in the south-east of Mexico – and so is Tulum. A quick search on Google Maps reveals the two are approximately 65km (that’s just over 40 miles for my British readers) apart. The drive between the two takes around one hour.

And where have you heard of Tulum before? Well, if you’ve been reading Amateur’s House for a while – or perhaps some of the more courageous dance outlets, which isn’t many – you’ll know that Tulum had a massive spike of Covid-19 cases earlier this year, some of which was being spread by DJs travelling there for work whilst much of the world remained closed.

Now here’s where this event gets truly unedifying. Quite a few of the DJs on this list were doing plague raves throughout the pandemic. Âme and Dixon, for example, were both out in Mexico earlier this year. Solardo played in Tulum at least once in February. And Amelie Lens has been doing plague raves since at least last summer. There are an awful lot more names on the list of people playing whose credentials in this area are suspect, to say the least.

It’s almost as if the organiser of Departure decided to browse the Business Teshno account on Twitter, make a note of as many plague rave DJs as possible, then get them all to one big event. Adding on a few who haven’t been doing them – CamelPhat, for example – might fool the dance music press, but it won’t fool this blog…