- In their short time in Austin, Nightculture has brought in top-notch DJs from across genres to the city. Unfortunately, their recent venue partnership with Phoenix has translated into repeated miscalculations as to what the Nightculture crowd wants. Phoenix, formerly Micheal Ault's chain bottle service lounge, keeps the music down to a whisper before 11:30 or so. The management does this to attract loungers more interested in hearing their own conversations than background music, but it's the exact opposite of what dance music fans want.
I arrived early to the club to hear Allen Tagle, one of my favorite DJs in Austin. He opened the night up with an incredible tech house selection that you could barely hear. The dancers on the floor asked Tagle and the sound man to turn it up, but the sound guy was under management's orders to keep it low. Tagle turned one of his monitors to the dance floor as a last resort, and a small group clustered within a yard of it to hear him mix. As the crowd filled out, the sound went up, and was much louder by the guest DJ, Lee Burridge, went on.
Sound issues aside, Phoenix is a beautiful place to host an event. Delacroix's wildly charged scene of an emperor's concubines being slaughtered around him—Death of Sardanapalus—charged the decadent mood with other powerful Romantic-era paintings overlooking the crowd. And, on this night, they were up for it. Maybe it was the music, maybe it was the promotion or maybe it was Phoenix's previously draconian dress code, but the typical Nightculture crowd was dressed for relaxed nightclubbing at the upscale joint. Gone were the costumed neo-ravers who predominate at other Austin nights, and gone was the hipster crowd as well.
Burridge took over at around midnight, and played music for two hours that traveled through genre and attitude. Fet Et Moi's Justin Timberlake rework "Paris Is for Lovers" was a mid-set highlight, but it was an unexpected drum & bass track that settled everyone down as they bounced their heads to the beat, savoring the final track in a satisfying night.