The Anaheim Grove next to Angel Stadium housed Into the AM’s latest electro/house event this past Saturday. There really is no better way to work off the post-Thanksgiving pounds than with a raging dance party, and boy do these men know how to incite a riot.
Into the AM’s resident DJs, LBCK and Dirty Rock, kicked off the night with some pretty standard club sets before passing on the torch to Autoerotique. A painfully cool Canadian native signed to DimMak, Autoerotique got the crowd primed and ready to mess up the auditorium with a list of house reworks of popular tracks like Foster the People’s breakthrough hit “Pumped Up Kicks” and Avicii’s ”Levels”. His stage presence as he commanded the decks with outstretched arms made him look something like a god of insane drops. All that nonchalant confidence was not put forth in vain for it was he who finally tore the wallflowers off the side railing and the party-rockers out of the bar.
Around midnight was when the real fun started with 12th Planet who played more than an hour long set of hard hitting bass bumping tunes. Classified as a dubstep artist, 12 Planet played to electro music’s more mainstream crowd with face melting Skrillex-esque hip-hop remixes. Despite the fact he strayed from the more subtle tracks that made him famous it seemed to be all apart of a well conceived strategy to play to the fresh-out-of-high-school audience, and hey! As they say: When in Rome, do as the Romans… and red-line that bass!
It really wasn’t until late into the AM that Steve Aoki finally descended upon the stage with his remix of “Pursuit of Happiness” and “Turbulence”. It was what everyone had been waiting for all night: to finally scream alongside Steve Aoki, and we knew the moment had arrived with the punctuated ticking of a clock. And not just any clock, the one ticking away the seconds to the enraged explosion of Steve Aoki’s pipes in the Bloody Beetroots’ “Warp 1.9”. Running solely on fumes and hunger craze, I and my visiting out-of-towners concluded the night with one last spurt of flailing limbs and the tossing of heads.
(photo credit: thebottleopener)
To sum up the experience, I still rest that electro/house is not exactly my cup o’ tea; however, what I can appreciate is the genuine love for the genre DJ’s and electronic artists maintain. It’s great to witness the contented head bob or raised arms, or in Steve Aoki’s case, his exultation reaches as far as standing on top of the decks and belting out his cries. Their excitement alongside the welcoming and equally ecstatic rave scene is always both a pleasure and a thrill.