Spin Season
Avaland's new DJ series promises anything but trance
Los Angeles has a lukewarm reputation when it comes to the international super-club circuit. For more than a decade, the city was known as a kids-and-candy raving haven. The city didn't even have a proper super-club night until the year 2000, long after New York, Miami, Boston, San Francisco, and even Orlando, Florida established a presence on the scene.
To this day, despite three large venues boasting regular super-club promotions, our global city is seen as somewhat staid in its electronic dance music tastes. If a local venue hosts a major trance DJ - say a Tiesto, Ferry Corsten, Armin Van Buuren, or Paul Van Dyk, all spinning a sound that peaked creatively in the late 1990s - there will surely be a line out the door. But if they bring in a more forward-thinking spinner who's beyond trance, it's a financial gamble. Club promoters, after all, have to slap down a deposit on performers and hope they get a decent payday on the back end. What's more, since 9/11, club-going crowds have thinned considerably. So a big-name DJ who plays a big, crowd-pleasing genre such as trance is a sound investment.
The gamblers who promote Avalon Hollywood's "Avaland" nights on Saturdays are trying to help the city's nightlife turn a creative corner. Starting September 1, the venue will host a "Fall-Winter Series," envisioned as a high-arts-like "season" where going out to catch the sounds of a lesser-known - but otherwise challenging - dance music artist will be an event in itself. Saturday's promoters, including Garrett Chau, Craig Edwards, and Damian Murphy, want to build the night for a new generation of club-goers more accustomed to dance-rock and electro-house than trance. The city's new hipsters have been raised on dance-friendly bands (LCD Soundsystem, The Kaxons, VHS or Beta) and are ready for a taste of nonstop, DJ-performed action. In fact, the lineup for Avaland's new series is as notable for what's in it as what's not: trance.
"I felt the clubs in L.A. had been known for bringing the biggest names in trance," says Chau, Avaland's director of promotion and booking. "That obviously dominated the scene for so long. People used to dress up and there were a lot of glow sticks, and that was that era. This new era is not about that. It's not anything against trance. It's a natural evolution."
Avaland's own evolution includes a lot of the techno and electro-house heroes that have been gaining a name for themselves not through radio, club play, or touring, but mainly through Internet music sites like Beatport and MySpace. There's a whole new generation of electronic dance music producers such as Booka Shade, which Avalon brought to town in spring, that have risen to prominence by directly wooing the earbuds of fans online. "Technology has helped start the resurrection of the scene," says Chau, a former Hollywood music-talent agent.
L.A.'s super-club nights have, for the most part, neglected to reflect this digital tidal wave of new stars - until now. Avaland's fall-winter lineup will include such online buzz-makers as Danish act Trentemoller (who had the remix of the year with Djuma Soundsystem's "Les Djinns"), San Francisco's Claude VonStroke (who's funky single "Who's Afraid of Detroit" has almost defined a new genre), and such techno new-schoolers as Adam Beyer and Tiefschwarz.Many of the acts - the exact show dates are still to be announced - will be triggering live tracks and remixes via laptop-based performance software, pushing Avaland's series even further beyond turntables and glow sticks. Trentemoller will even perform with a four-piece band. Says Chau:
"I think there's a super-club renaissance in this new group of artists and producers."
Published: 08/16/2007
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