words by Aldo Davalos // photos by Ellei Johndro (Shadow Scene)

On December 31^st 1996, Los Angeles hosted one of the largest massive raves that the city had ever seen. Entitled Seventh Heaven, over 10,000 people from across the southland descended upon the Grand Olympic Auditorium to usher in the New Year. I remember this event vividly. At the time I was working at an ice cream store at Universal Citiwalk, just a young 16 years old myself. And an 18-year old coworker, a Jean Grey-like redhead who I was completely infatuated with, told me about it. Our boss wouldn’t let us leave work early, so we both quit our minimum wage jobs on the spot and made our way to Downtown LA. You could hear the music thumping blocks away, and we were soon swallowed up into a parade of what appeared to be a throng of muppets: big furry glow-in-the-dark jackets, stacked boots, obese-legged JNCO jeans and candy bracelets lining every person in eyeshot. Fliers of parties to come littered the streets. The party appeared to be going off seamlessly, until something turned. People in the crowd were drinking a liquid called “FX” that was making them sick. According to Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Jeff Leeds, firefighters received a call at 9:15pm that many partygoers were becoming ill from this mystery liquid. By the time it was over, 15 ambulances and what seemed like one hundred police officers arrived to shut down the party. What followed was utter chaos. When the brightly dressed mob of ravers refused to disperse, police officers fired rubber bullets, beanbags, and tear gas into the crowd. What was supposed to be a celebration of peace, love, unity and respect turned into a full-blown riot. Parties had been broken up before, but it seemed liked after Seventh Heaven, more and more parties were being broken up every consecutive weekend. It was the beginning of the end. In 2000 again I attended a NYE party that was broken up by police, this one in North Hollywood. The public was being warned of the dangers these drug-fueled raves were posing to children across America, and the hysteria within the media was bubbling over. In 2003, Congress passed the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act, which was authored by our very own Vice President Joe Biden. Updating an antiquated bill originally targeting crackhouses, the RAVE Act (Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act) was proposed to incriminate party promoters for the drugs sold at their events. With up to 20,000 people attending these events, policing every attendee’s drug consumption would be statistically impossible. Besides, electronic music certainly wasn’t the first form of art to be inspired by narcotics, nor the first events with drugs sold aplenty — you needn’t peer further than the thick acrid clouds at any given rock show from Tool to Bon Jovi to Grateful Dead to even Dave Matthews Band, nevermind the infamous LSD-addled concerts of the ‘70s. Yet it seemed clearly like the US government was hell bent on ensuring electronic music events were either illegal or impossible to promote.

Where’s Kevin Bacon when really you need him?

Hit the Jump to continue reading Aldo Davalos’ feature on the Resurgence of Rave  in America, including interviews with Karl Hyde, Steve Aoki, Richard Bishop, Gary Richards, Tiga and more…

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“In Europe, the battle was won and techno became accepted in the culture.” Tiga

And yet something happened along the way. 13 years later, on June 26^th and 27^th 2009, Los Angeles hosted the Electric Daisy Carnival, which is on Saturday night had over 100,000 partygoers attend — making it the largest electronic music festival in the history of the United States, ten-times that of Seventh Heaven a decade earlier. To reference Malcolm Gladwell, it seemed like electronic music had reached its Tipping Point. The dance community, or as I like to call it, the Dance, had arrived. So what happened? Where did the music go, and more importantly, why is it back? And if it is back, is it here to stay? I attended this summer’s HARDfest in Los Angeles, one of the fastest growing electronic music festival brands in the United States, and sat down with some of the artists that were scheduled to perform as well as the festival’s promoter Gary Richards, in hopes they could shed some light as to why electronic music has broken (again) in such a big way. Coincidentally, what happened that night seemed to mirror events of the past.

First, let’s hash out this whole issue of electronic music and how it’s defined. In the beginning there was disco, and from disco came new wave, house, techno and trance. The label “techno” implied a sound of the future, anchoring it to its technologically advanced foundations. In the ‘90s, MTV tried to call it something else: electronica. But that was more a catch-all phrase to define all rhythm-based music made with computers, and followers of the music balked at the classification. Still, from that came breakbeats, French touch house, drum n bass, jungle, industrial, hardcore (both happy and hard), digital, glitch, garage, goa trance, psytrance, brain dance, IDM, EBM, and every other incarnation under the sun. Recently, the new scene brought about more subdivisions. Electro, fidget, shake, bassline, two step, dubstep, and even more stratifications within the genre. So for simplicity sake, whether I talk about Air to Aphex Twin, Dieselboy to Boys Noize, Zombie Nation to ZZT, to me… it’s all Dance. And ultimately, that’s what it is. Music to shake your ass to. With that said, let’s talk a little more about Dance and electronic music.

Electronic music is currently going through a second renaissance in the United States, but it was a renaissance that was 10 years in the making. In the ‘90s it seemed primed to break in the mainstream. Artists like Prodigy, Daft Punk and Fatboy Slim dominated the airwaves, and a slew of second tier acts like the Propellerheads and Underworld had significant hype to their backs. The stage seemed set for massive crossover exposure. “I think when people expected it to grow in the mid ‘90s with artists like Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy, they expected a load of bands to get on the radio and compete on a chart basis. They saw a novelty value and thought there was about to be a trend where everyone would be into electronic music,” notes Richard Bishop, head of 3 Artist Management, manager to both The Crystal Method and Paul Van Dyk, two of the era’s most influential artists. The problem was, unlike pop music, there weren’t enough artists making this crossover-type of music to make a huge impact in the mainstream. As it is fundamentally an instrumental music, the lack of lyrics stunted its appeal to Joe the Plumber. “I think the core of artists selling records then were pretty small. The Crystal Method, Moby, The Prodigy, and Chemical Brothers all had hit records, but most of these artists kept playing in the underground. They survived for the next 10 years.”

But if they had hit records, why didn’t it translate to a large national movement like it did in Europe? “As far as these groups were concerned, there was never really a moment when things happened as [the general public] had suspected or hoped. People thought they were about to have a new trend in the same way as punk rock or hair metal started, but it was never that movement,” continues Bishop. “It was always a more underground-based form of music, a more party or event-based form of music.” The electronic music movement, for a lack of a better term, was a visceral experience. It was limited by its spectacle. In an era defined by record sales, it seemed like electronic music wasn’t staking it’s claim in the markets where it would need in order to survive.

Gary Richards, owner and promoter of HARDfest has more insight. Richard believes that the reason why electronic music never exploded is, because at the time, nobody knew who the artists were. “People know it now because they’ve been paying attention, but in the ‘90s nobody knew the difference between Moby and Ritchie Hawtin. When they played it’s not like they were screaming out on a mic, ‘Yo I’m Josh Wink! What up!’ They’re just DJing. They’re not making mainstream music. They’re making club-based music.” The key with DJing and dance music is that the artists are often hidden behind their equipment. It wasn’t about individual songs; it was about taking the listener through a journey.

I asked Tiga, founder of Turbo Recordings and one of the artists that had been scheduled to play at HARDfest, of his impression of why dance music never broke. Perhaps as a DJ himself, he would have a different impression. “The term itself, break, is tricky. There are different sides to it,” offers Tiga. Certainly, there are many elements involved in the success of a recording artist. But culturally, he pointed out that “there’s never been much radio support or mainstream media support. The rock establishment ruled North America. It’s strange considering how many artists came from Detroit and Chicago. San Francisco was very influential for dance culture and yet for some reason, when you speak about electronic music, the evolution has been very slow in North America. It’ll take a few steps forward and a few steps back.” Even in Los Angeles, one of the pioneers of rave culture in the US, electronic music was always relegated to deserted warehouses, outlying deserts or wooded forests. The music existed but it always had to be sought out in the fringes — both metaphorically and proximally. It was a task just to learn about the music; it was a mission to find it. When compared to the dance culture in Europe, Tiga cites a big difference. “When compared to a place like Germany, techno is so part of the culture now that it’s intertwined with many elements of everyday living, whether it be through radio, nightlife or tourism. In Europe, the battle was won and techno became accepted in the culture.”

But what distinction created a shift in the American dance culture if so many artists came from the States? “In the mid ‘90s much of the alternative youth energy that in Europe went into Techno music, in North America went into hip-hop. In the mid ‘90s that’s where most of the explosion went,” points out Tiga.

The appeal of hip-hop in US in the late ‘90s, both commercially and culturally, cannot be exaggerated. As a teenager in high school, the frenzy surrounding artists like Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre was inescapable. Even though I was busy quitting my ice cream job and attending raves, I was also building my own foundations to hip-hop. And I’m not alone. Ask anyone under 40 to rap a few lines from “Nuthin But A G Thang,” and I’m sure more likely than not, they could repeat it couplet for couplet. Raver Andy C., 29, from Los Angeles, another attendee of HARDfest, put it most eloquently. “There was an ‘electronica’ fad, and you had artists like Underworld, The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, Björk and Fatboy Slim putting out hit records and it seemed like electronic music, ‘futuristic’ music, was going to be the big thing of the new millennium, and then hip-hop exploded in the mid ‘90s with artists like The Notorious B.I.G., Puff Daddy and Snoop Dogg. The way I like to think about it is, hip-hop came in, beat up all the ravers, and stole all the girls.” Andy has been following Underworld, the scheduled headliners, since 1998. On this tour, he saw them in Las Vegas and in San Francisco.

Between the music industry model of radio play and selling records to hip-hop stealing the thunder of an entire movement, one would imagine that to be enough to stifle Dance. But one persistent element that sealed the fate of Dance in the ‘90s was the black mark of the scene – its inextricable association with drugs. “There’s a different view of drug culture in North America from the rest of the world,” notes Tiga. At the beginning of the millennium there was a mounting negative backlash against Dance and its association with drugs, with the media waging a full-scale war against raves. The US government was introducing harsher legislation to prosecute party promoters under the same laws used to prosecute owners of crackhouses. “It’s almost part of the culture,” says Steve Aoki, founder and owner of Dim Mak Records and currently one of the most sought after DJs in the world. “To me, trance is the pinnacle of drug music and yet you’ll find most Trance DJs don’t do any drugs whatsoever. It’s just part of the world we live in. And if you asked me the same question about Rock n’ Roll, I’d say the same thing.”

“It’s like what Disco Donnie had to go through. You’ve heard of Disco Donnie right?” Aoki asks.

“Disco Donnie” was the famous sacrificial lamb for the type of hysteria that existed at the time. This TIME Magazine article was just one example of a national sentiment that was growing around the country. James D. Estopinal Jr., aka “Disco Donnie”, was a rave promoter in New Orleans who threw parties in the ‘90s at The State Palace on Canal Street. Estopinal was going to be made an example of; he would be the first rave promoter to be indicted under new anti-drug laws. Vice President (then Senator) Joe Biden introduced into the 107^th session of Congress the Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy (RAVE) Act and later, re-introduced it to the 108^th session of Congress as the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act as an amendment to the “Crack House Statute.” This legislation was added as a rider to the Amber Alert Bill so that Congress would pass it through without debate. This new amendment made it illegal for “anyone who knowingly opens, leases, rents, or maintains, whether permanently or temporarily, any place for the purpose of using distributing or manufacturing any controlled substance.” On the DEA’s website, it says that this law would be used to target “Unscrupulous Event Promoters.” Whether fair or not, it seemed like Dance would be forever stigmatized. I spoke with Karl Hyde, one-half of the iconic group Underworld, about this black smear on the electronic music community. Once upon a time, Karl fought his own demons with alcohol, so I knew he would provide useful perspective. “I never understood why dance music was singled out for the use of drugs because it’s in all musical genres. It goes back to jazz and classical music. Musicians and composers over the centuries have thought narcotics and alcohol would enhance their creative process, and that’s gone hand-in-hand with their audience.” Richard Bishop shares a similar sentiment. He references musicians of the past and their legacies left behind. “There’s no doubt that Jimi Hendrix was a drug guy, and Jim Morrison was a drug guy, and Janis Joplin was a drug woman and I don’t think their careers were belittled in any way because they were drug people. If you listen to Jimi’s records, they’re just as contemporary now as they were when they came out 40 years ago. I don’t think his career or his records were any worse because he was a drug user. He was an amazing musician.” So like many of its genre predecessors, electronic music was no different.

Regardless of fairness, it seemed like the rave scene was headed the way of disco and the dinosaurs. For like disco, according to Tiga, “in North America, Techno was always seen as so radical when it’s really not that radical. Everyone was dancing to Disco for years. But even with Disco, you saw the reaction against it. People were freaking out and burning records.”

As Tiga states, “They went back to the safety of rock.”

And it seems like from this unlikely place would come the salvation for the dance community that would allow it to rise from the ashes, and soar to greater heights than previous.

Let’s get it straight.

Electronic music didn’t ever just go away. It’s not like producers stopped making music and DJs stopped playing. In the mid 2000s, electronic music remained in the subconscious of society. “The music stayed in the mainstream by being played in the background of stores, being featured in scores for movies, trailers and commercials, and in the last 10 years, none of that has gone away,” notes Richard Bishop. While it might not have been obvious, it was there. Next time you’re watching a car commercial or a TV show, pay attention to the music in the background. Next time you’re shopping for skinny jeans at Urban Outfitters, listen to that melody playing in the background.

But it’s the unlikely sound of rock and roll that helped Dance sprout new roots. Out of the ashes came the new sound of Electro. “You had all these indie rockers who were making dance music, but making it more acceptable for people who liked rock music, like LCD Soundsystem and all the stuff on the DFA label. They were making disco music, but it wasn’t for ravers — meaning glow sticks and jester hats and all that shit,” muses raver Andy C. “It was the opposite of that whole disco sucks thing. They made disco cool again, and that helped set up the stage for Daft Punk to come back again.”

And that unlikely Daft Punk comeback is one of the most salient factors in the resurgence of Dance. Nobody knew what to expect during that warm spring evening in Coachella in April 2006, as Daft Punk hadn’t toured stateside since 1997. What transpired in that dark tent has become the stuff of legend, one of the hallmark performances at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival — arguably America’s most important and respected perennial music festivals just outside of Palm Springs. The set was passed around the Internet like a virus, and it became the most talked about event of the festival. Soon, the clamor for a Daft Punk reunion tour hit a fever pitch, and the following summer they launched the Alive 2007 Tour which brought that Coachella show across America. Not even I had a clue for what was in store when that show came to Southern California. My friend Heather called me the day of asking if I wanted to go see Daft Punk at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. We managed to score tickets, so reluctantly I decided to go. I thought I was going to be in for a night of dated 90’s eletronica nostalgia. Instead, I proceeded to be aurally sodomized by heavy bass for 2 hours. In my estimation, I was witnessing the re-birth of something I hadn’t felt in years. Daft Punk brought a production level that previously had been reserved for the likes of Metallica and Madonna to the Dance arena. “Daft Punk brought something new. They had a huge pyramid and LED screens in the back yelling FUCK FUCK FUCK. They stepped it up,” says Gary Richards. In many ways, they learned the way of the arena rock performance and brought it into the dance community. It certainly lived up to one of the most memorable shows of my lifetime.

The resurgence of Daft Punk helped pave the way for this huge growth of Electro in North America. New artists like Justice and MSTRKRFT have exploded on the scene and are breathing new life into the dance community. “The reason you’re seeing a growth in North America is because of people like Justice and Ed Bangers. It’s electronic and dancey but it has a pop side and a rock side. The irony is that it comes back to this old American format; much of their imagery comes from playing on this American stereotype. With the Marshall amps, the leather jackets and their tour across America,” argues Tiga. “The little explosion in America has been like a sprint. It’s a high-octane burst Electro. Whether you’re talking about MSTRKRFT, or The Bloody Beetroots, or Crookers, it has a lot of punch lines, lots of peaks, vocals, bells and whistles, and mainly lots of energy. It’s good because it gets lots of kids excited about it.” Gary Richards adds this observation: “In the ‘60s and ‘70s you had bass, drums and guitar. In the ‘90s you had turntables and samplers.” He identifies that transition as the point where the creation of music would change forever. “I wasn’t saying Rock music would go away, but music can only be pushed with the aid of a computer. So now in 2009, you have kids who, instead of asking their parents for a Les Paul guitar, they’re asking for 1200s or they want CDJs or Ableton or Seratto.” Even Raver Andy C. notices a defining shift. “The electronic music we’re hearing now is not the same music we were hearing in the ‘90s. It’s very minimal. The sound is raw. It sort of has a laptop feel to it — minimal sounds with hard electro filters. Think back to the ‘90s: you had artists like Sasha making this epic multilayered symphonic music. Now it’s minimal, and that minimalism was born from indie rock, which also has a minimal production style.” He compares this evolution to another era. “In a way, it’s a lot like the ‘80s. In the ‘80s you had popular music that was electronically produced and danceable, but when Nirvana came along that became the least cool thing you could do, make a big production record, and now that minimal production sound is coming back. It’s not coming back in a way that’s taking over something else. Now, everything is on equal footing. The way the music industry has gone, there’s really no dominant form of music anymore.”

So how does this affect established artists like Underworld who helped build the foundation of electronic music in the ‘90s? According to Karl Hyde, “It’s great that we have young new groups that have taken on what we, now the contemporaries, have been doing for a long time and have reappraised it and made it their own. The fact that we never went away and have been able to carry on what we do has been fantastic for us, but what I get most excitement about is the young groups that are making it their own and creating their own voice. When we see younger groups taking this genre and subverting it to get what they want to out of it, then it has new life and we get inspired by it. It inspires the new music we write.”

It seems that even popular artists like Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas and Flo Rida are drawing inspiration from this new sound. Steve Aoki recanted a conversation he had with another pop icon. “I spoke with Kanye last year about the transformation and evolution of popular music. We’re in that transition period where you’re getting the blend of old dance records on top of Flo Rida or Pitbull or some other pop hip-hop artist.” Richard Bishop also sees the influence this dance culture is having on popular music. “Will.I.Am is a friend of electronic music, so when he writes or produces a record it’s not surprising that there are more elements of electronic music than before. I think what you’re seeing there is the use of production elements similar to Madonna’s Ray Of Light where they pull from electronic music.” But Karl Hyde believes that this relationship between Dance and pop culture has helped to strengthen the staying power of electronic music. “Pop music forms a bridge between the popular culture and the underground. The underground is crucial for the development of any scene; today’s underground can be tomorrow’s pop. The popular culture is crucial because we want to be able to communicate with as many people as possible while maintaining the integrity of the music. We want to be on daytime radio as well as the underground clubs. It’s great because people involved with the pop culture are like messengers that go on ahead and tell people about this cool music.” Perhaps this blend of pop culture and the underground dance culture has created the right time for a new movement to blossom.

In my estimation, the reason why electronic music is bigger now than it has ever been is because of timing. Timing of technology. Timing of the economy. Timing of the infiltration into pop culture. Building on the mistakes of the past, the electronic music community has finally found its stride—it’s niche. In that regard, electronic music went from being an underground movement, having had to be sought out in dark alleys and abandoned warehouses to being held in huge stadiums and arenas, places fit for mainstream sporting events. It went from being a localized scene to a global scene. As Gary Richards states, “The way people access the music now, you have Boys Noize in Germany, Erol Alkan in the UK, Crookers in Italy and Diplo here, but they’re all part of the same scene because of the Internet.”

If there was ever a tool that has accelerated the way we process, digest and distribute music, it’s been the Internet. Before music blogs, and band websites, and Napster and iTunes existed, the evolution of music was limited to geographical constraints. Sure, you had world class DJs like Paul Oakenfold and Paul van Dyk traveling across the pond to play in larger American cities, but the scenes themselves were localized. You had Detroit techno and Chicago house. Parties in NYC were different than parties in LA. And what about the kids living in Barrentown, Oklahoma? How would they get to hear this music? Now with the Internet, a track can go live on a blog in Germany, get aggregated by a site in London, and be heard live at a club in San Fransisco, all within a 24-hour period. Then, within weeks, be remixed by producers in South Africa, Chile, Belgium and Japan. It’s that swiftness of accessibility that has caused a globalization of Dance. It’s why producers like Boys Noize and Erol Alkan and Crookers and Diplo can now all be a part of the same movement, even if they come from points across the Earth. Previously, scenes were defined by their host cities. Now with the Internet, there is a network of global artists that are as friendly and acclimated with each other as the Seattle grunge scene ever was. It has single-handedly allowed the global Dance to all unify into one scene.

It’s for these reasons that electronic music has finally reached its Tipping Point in North America.

And that’s how I found myself once again, 12 years later, at another massive rave, sitting in loge section 4 row O of the Great Western Forum, former home to the Los Angeles Lakers. There they all were, the faces of kids who had never experienced anything quite like this mixed with adults that had seen it all before. For example, take a look at raver Brad, 23, from Riverside. HARDfest was his second rave ever. I asked him why he thought of it all. “I definitely dig this culture. People are very respectful when you’re here and everyone is here for the same purpose.” Brad was introduced to the rave scene by his friend Brando, 21, who started raving when he was 17 years old. I spoke to Jon, 24, who started raving months prior. They all came for the same reason: they love Dance. So do I. I still do after all these years. Unfortunately, something happened on this particular night at HARDfest. The high-octane energy, as Tiga coined it, could not be contained in an Arena built for rock shows and sporting events. Kids started jumping down 15 ft. from the loge area onto a floor that was already at capacity, and what was at first a small trickle became a human waterfall of leaping bodies. Mob rule took over and the Inglewood Police Department declared the event unsafe and decided to shut it down at around 11pm. Even though event promoters like Gary Richards now work closely with city and law enforcement officials to host safe events, this one had gotten out of hand. I don’t blame the promoters of HARDfest. A mob of 20,000 people can be a difficult thing to control.

As much as I was disappointed that I didn’t get to see Underworld or Tiga perform, I felt a little happy inside knowing that thousands of people filled an arena on a Saturday night simply to dance. Certainly some things don’t change. I did find it a strange coincidence that of all parties I decided to attend to write about, this is the one that was shut down. It brought back memories of that night on December 31^st, 1996. Well, except for the rubber bullets and tear gas part. I’m glad I didn’t have to re-live that memory. But I’m glad some things did change that would allow this community to flourish. It’s changed for the better and now it’s here to stay. As Karl Hyde put it, “electronic music has arrived where it’s become accepted as an exciting musical form. I’m really excited and it’s very cool with what’s happening. Prior to last year, we wondered whether electronic music would ever reach that Tipping Point. We’ve been touring more in the last two years in the states than ever before. You can understand for us doing what we’ve been doing for so long, it’s incredibly exciting for us to see it kicking off this way.”

I have high hopes for the strength of the electronic music community. Perhaps it might never hang high in the echelons with Rock or R&B or Pop, but one thing is for certain—love it or hate it, it is here to stay.

New music to keep an eye out for:

Gary Richards: Buraka Som Sistema and Zombie Nation—I have them both playing for Halloween. I think Zombie Nation’s album is fucking incredible and more people will find out about them as they play more.

Richard Bishop: Crystal Castles—I have high hopes for Crystal Castles. I think they’re going to do very big things in the future. Their singer has the potential to be a star.

Tiga: Proxy, TooManyDJs and Harvard Bass—Proxy is excellent. Everyone from Justice to Crookers are playing his records. Harvard Bass from San Diego is really good. I’m really into his sound.

Steve Aoki: All Leather and The Bloody Beetroots—All Leather is Justin Pearson’s new band. They’re like an acidy punk infused electronic art band, good stuff. The Bloody Beetroots are getting a huge massive response around the world and their new album is coming out on Dim Mak Records.

Underworld: I really enjoy the influence that Justice and MGMT are having. They are doing some really inspiring stuff.

Aldo Davalos: I really am digging this guy A1 Bassline from the UK at the moment. He has some wicked tracks out. Drums Of Death is coming out with some killer remixes and I have high hopes for his new album. He just produced a track on the new Peaches record. Black Holes are up and coming heavy hitters that will break through in 2010. Guaranteed.