Secteur Sucre.
The freedom to make people dance.
Nico on starting out in La Chaux-de-Fonds, returning to QKC and the B2Bs that break familiar habits.
In conversation with Nico · Secteur Sucre · Translated from French
A group of friends, familiar faces at parties and a wish to bring their musical worlds together: Secteur Sucre grew out of a collective approach to making people dance. In this interview recorded ahead of SubLiminal at QKC on 30 October 2026, Nico looks back at their beginnings, how they build a line-up and the freedom to move from 120 to 160 BPM without being confined to one style.
The DJ collective from the canton of Neuchâtel moves between trance, techno, house, break and hardgroove. In this written interview from October 2026, Nico speaks on behalf of Secteur Sucre. The portraits supplied in their press kit feature Ugo2hell, Lor1, Cesyl, Spice District and Angora.
Friends first, then a first night
How did you meet, and when did you decide to put on nights together? Tell us about an early memory that still feels like Secteur Sucre today.
We’re a group of friends who were all living in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 2022. We each DJed a little on our own, with fairly similar musical worlds. We kept running into one another at parties and afterparties. So we wanted to join forces and start a DJ collective to put on colourful, energetic nights that really make people dance.
One memory is our first night at QKC in March 2023. Lots of friends from La Chaux-de-Fonds and Neuchâtel came along, with really punchy, danceable sets. That artistic direction is still with us today, along with a real family spirit.
Building SubLiminal together
For your return to QKC on 30 October, where do you start: a musical idea, someone’s wish, or tracks you’re determined to play? How does that first idea become a night shaped by several people?
For this night at QKC, we’ll have quite an eclectic line-up, with guest Leomaus, who has already played at several well-known clubs in Switzerland. We’re not really going to change a recipe that works. There’ll be plenty of trance sounds and galloping rhythms.
We’ll get straight into it with a trance and hardgroove set from Cancan Star, followed by Cesyl with a very percussive set drawing on Latin influences. Then comes the surprise of our guest Leomaus’s set, which will definitely get the crowd going with energetic tracks, followed by a hardgroove closing set from Acalar.
For this night, we chose the line-up partly around everyone’s availability. Those who aren’t playing this time will play at the next one.
We like keeping that freedom and putting together a set according to what we feel like playing and what we’re listening to at the time.
Freedom between 120 and 160 BPM
The night’s description mentions groovy techno and trance. Has someone recently brought a track to the collective that made the others want to play it too? What appealed to you about it?
I don’t think it was one track that made the others want to play, but more of a vibe. As I was saying, we went to a lot of the same nights, and everyone wanted to explore different musical horizons rather than be confined to one style.
That’s why our nights often feature different styles of music. Sometimes we like exploring different worlds within a single set, too. I think it’s hard for any member of the collective to assign themselves one style. We like keeping that freedom and putting together a set according to what we feel like playing and what we’re listening to at the time.
And that’s exactly the freedom everyone enjoys: being able to play really gentle stuff around 120 BPM, then gallop along at 160 BPM at the next party.
For this night, we recently met in a bar and simply built the line-up by putting our guest at peak time, then placing the collective’s members according to what we were listening to and wanted to play on this occasion. Cesyl, for example, usually plays closing sets with fast, hard trance influences. For this QKC night, he wanted to play a very percussive set around 140 BPM, because he’d recently had the chance to do that and really enjoyed it.
The B2Bs you don’t expect
When you share the decks, what gets decided beforehand and what happens in the moment? Can you remember someone taking an unexpected direction and the others following?
At some nights, we don’t have a clearly defined line-up, or at least we try putting together unusual B2Bs. It lets us practise and step outside our comfort zones, playing tracks we play less often on our own.
I remember Ugo2hell and Angora delivering an incredible closing set at Le Romandie. We’d rarely seen the two of them explore such fast, intense musical territory together. It was surprising, but it worked really well!
Another example: we’re lucky enough to have a two-hour slot at New Year for Capitale culturelle 2027 in La Chaux-de-Fonds. We’ll be presenting a first-ever B2B between Acalar and Ugo2hell. They won’t have played a B2B together before, and that’s exactly what we enjoy: trying to play with the people we play with less often.
Places that open doors
In the canton of Neuchâtel, which encounter or place really helped you move forward? And what new collaboration would you like to see between local crews?
Since we were based around La Chaux-de-Fonds at the start, I’d mainly say bars such as La Meute, now La Loutre, and Bikini Test. For three years, Lor1 and Cesyl have been helping to organise “L’Ultima” there, the last night of the season, with lots of local DJs. In the lower part of the canton, QKC and DTK quickly gave us opportunities to perform, and we were fortunate enough to be able to organise nights there.
For new collaborations, we’d love to join forces with other collectives in the canton to put on nights on a potentially bigger scale. We’d also really like to play in places that aren’t normally intended for parties but might be open to the idea. Neuchâtel is full of those kinds of places.
Secteur Sucre
Interview by email · Editorial and image art direction: SCENE:ID. Ugo2hell · Secteur Sucre · SCENE:ID · Lor1 · Secteur Sucre · Cesyl · Secteur Sucre · Spice District · Secteur Sucre · Angora · Secteur Sucre