- It takes one hell of a show to get me to Avalon; despite being constantly lauded as one of Hollywood's top clubs and winning prizes from various music publications for "Best Atmosphere," I find the crowd to be the worst I have experienced anywhere, anytime. Ever.
To be fair, the 21+ Saturday night crowd is slightly better than the 18+ Friday evening crew, which was actually more courteous than usual this past weekend. I only had to forcibly remove one hand from my ass, only one full drink (mine) was spilled in its entirety down my chest by an unapologetic stranger and only one random boy "jokingly" put me in a headlock and tried to force-feed me his drink on the dance floor. This is the shit you have to put up with when you go to Avalon. But for Daedelus and Pantyraid, I will put my ass on the line. Or in a stranger's palm, as it were.
The laws of LA nightlife make it almost impossible to get to Avalon or any other party before midnight, even if you start getting ready at 8PM. I rolled into the beautiful venue just as Pantyraid was dropping a remix of "Foes," to the tune of "fuck all them haters, fuck all them hoes," bought the aforementioned $7 Stella and fought my way into the main room.
Pantyraid, comprised of the Glitch Mob's Ooah and Brooklyn-based Marty Party, plays with a raw, slap-yourself style, beats tweaked to the balconies by electronic wizardry but held in place with a sturdy hip-hop backbone. The duo seemed to be a little less connected with their audience than I have seen in the past. (Then again, who the hell wants to connect with this crowd?) But the drops that garnered the biggest response from the dance floor were Pantyraid's original tracks, something that tells me that we're dealing with talent on the rise.
Daedelus soon took over with faster BPMs, which seemed to please the crowd that was itching to twitch and bounce. When the beats get slower, dance moves become more exaggerated and the level of inhibition goes up—causing some people to shrink away to the back of the room. But Daedelus reeled them in with a hyper-hypnotic blend of electronic genre mutations. Too bad they couldn't see his hands working their magic on the Monome.
Thank God for artists who push the limits, for those who bring beats from the side streams and throw them on top of a meat-market audience that could not possibly be any more mainstream. It can be a risky move for an artist not to play to the crowd, but for every guy on the dance floor saying, "I'm confused—where's the house music?" (actual quote), there's likely another brain lit on fire by fresh and unfamiliar sounds.