- Austin's underground dance music scene is a strange animal that is slowly emerging from the hold of a few major promoters short on cash and vision into a much more relevant and diverse soundscape. Nightculture is one of the new promoters in town (though they have years of experience in Houston) and they've been keeping a finger on the pulse of fresh beats around the world, and (more importantly) proving that there's a space for them in Austin. Example: Audiofly at Pangaea earlier this month.
Austin's DJ Tego was spinning an opening set of deep tech house tunes when I got to the venue a bit after 10. Young Audiofly fans and older house heads mingled with each other in the beautiful, lounge-friendly atmosphere. Pangaea is a safari themed nightclub in Austin's upscale-ish warehouse district. On a usual night, dress code is strictly enforced, bottle service is king and the door men are intimidating. For Audiofly, the venue was more relaxed. A visiting New York City nightclubber said that the best part of Austin nightlife are the cheap drinks (it's all relative), but bottle service was not the priority for the roughly 300 people in the door (Nightculture estimates) who packed the small dance floor instead of lounging.
When Audiofly's Anthony Middleton approached the booth he was greeted warmly with whistles and howls to his first few tracks and more fevered dancing from the floor. Luca Saporito, the other half of the DJ and production duo, was nowhere in sight, and apparently not even in Austin. Middleton spun the entire set solo, starting with deep house early in his set. He dropped Audiofly's "1999" as he built towards more forceful tech house and played Roland Clark's "I Get Deep" a little later. As 2 AM approached and the lights came up to signal everyone out of the club (yes, clubs in Austin close at 2 AM), Middleton dropped Jamie Jones' "You" to a still grooving crowd.