By Sasha Westerfield
There is always something happening in L.A. Rather than some huge, complex, unfeeling machine, the city is more of a living ecosystem , with cycles and movements that sweep through the night lives of the young adults living in and around the area, intensifying as the week progresses, and more and more events are announced. It’s like you can feel the tension start to build up, in palpable anticipation of the weekend. The L.A. party scene is famous for a reason, on any night the city is alive, packed with people trying to have a good time, here to enjoy being young while wearing crazy outfits and spending time with friends. It is a huge, international city with so much to offer someone trying to dance late into the night. There’s so many options in fact, that for some people the night has no reason to end at a normal time.
Introducing the L.A. “Afters” Scene, which are events found past the witching hour in the Downtown L.A warehouse district. Named “afters” in honor of their late starting times, often Midnight (or later!) to 4 or 5 am, an AFters event is the perfect spot to go “after” a more traditional bar or club, for the kind of dancing people don’t tend to do before they have warmed up with at least a few drinks, with other substances also being commonplace, in order to keep their energy going so late into the night and early into the morning. Energy sorely needed, because Afters follow the model set by raves in terms of late times, banging music, and specialized appeal. Afters are just late night, short raves, and so can feature so many different kinds of music, from house and trance, to hardstyle techno, to Ayesha Erotica style high femme: anything that has a beat and a bass that can be boosted enough to shake the warehouse windows. The real connective theme of an L.A. Afters is Loud, let’s get Loud!
Friday night, the texts start rolling in: Are you up? RIGHT NOW FREE B4 3AM! I miss you… INSANE PARTY TONIGHT! MASSIVE HEADLINER. Each one for a different event, because it’s not until you’ve signed up for 4 or more text chains off of a random internet webpage or instagram profile advertising their bright, aggressive flyers, before you realize just how big the Afters scene really is, and some days you can see free tickets sent to over 400 people for one, single warehouse event. And I believe it, even though I am not dancing until 5 am. When I leave around 1 or 2 am, the line continues to stretch around the block. There is a real thrum of community present in the people that enter these spaces, and they are comfortable being there, despite the instability present around them. Unlike the gloss of a West Hollywood club, when you pull up your car to Downtown LA at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night, you will notice cracked concrete, those homeless, their trashfires, broken glass, etc… You will park your car somewhere usually mildly illegal, maybe too packed tight together with all the others, or your rear tips into a
driveway or red zone. Everyone is doing it though, and you are surrounded by other groups of people in small outfits, passing bottles or pens from hand to hand as they stream down this alleyway or that. Eventually you make your way to the place you chose, the beating sounds getting louder and louder as you wait your turn to hand over your I.D. and pass the ticket check. Inside is where the real magic happens, and hopefully with earplugs, you have the chance to experience the L.A. afters scene at full power.
The most extreme, and my favorite of the genres, are the hardstyle techno events. Here the BPM is at its harshest, the electronic melodies condensed into pure flashes of sounds. With a good D.J., the pulsing is overwhelming, building up into more and more intense drops, each song hitting like a truck. Techno like this is special, it could not have been made with the tools in the 17th century, or 18th century, or even 20 years ago. This is digital technology pushed as far as it will go, something which could only be from the minds of people who have grown up on dubstep and edm, wanting to take the noise and amplify it to a fever pitch. Maybe there’s a little bit of that ipad kid search for dopamine thrown in there as well. They remix memes and famous songs, pull bits and pieces and mash them together, to make a wholly unique listening, and dancing, experience.
The mainstream music industry should probably understand the way things are changing, we are in the age of 2hollis and Snow strippers, Zheani and Bratislava. Rave music is not just confined to desert retreats, it has become the sound of the future, the sound of generation Z. And in living in such a hyper technologized society, it is no wonder we are seeing electronica’s meteoric rise. While for some this does not sound like a good night, more of an overstimulating nightmare actually, for others this is clearly speaking to something deeper, and informs us the changes in what we look for in our cultural experiences: We are once again craving a chance for a cathartic moment, a collective cathartic movement. When that beat drops, everyone moves and jumps and even breathes the same energy, the body seems to dissolve, and feeling the music is sole thing anyone in the vicinity can do. Our generation craves community, and the music of the Afters takes on our desires in order to deliver what it feels like nothing in the world is doing at that moment: togetherness.
Is this what music sounds like now? Some people may grumble about it, but yes. It is. Charli XCX’s breakout album last year, BRAT, shows intensity in our beats is here to stay, and the meaningful impact rave culture makes on our modern society. For anyone not enjoying it like I am, my advice is just to ride the wave. Everything comes in cycles, especially music, and one day this style will fade or evolve, but right now it is hitting the sweet spot for thousands of people each year.
