What Is the Los Angeles Warehouse Scene?

Allen Al-Attar/ Last Night's Elixir Photography

Making Shapes warehouse party

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Lucky for them in the last few years a new wave of parties has sprung up, bringing internationally respected DJs to L.A. and creating a burgeoning scene that is still somewhat underground, with chest-rattling bass emerging from converted factories outside of Chinatown or empty warehouses just south of the 10 Freeway.

Taking dance music out of the club isn't a new concept here, of course. L.A. was a hotbed of rave culture in the early '90s, and continues to support long-running parties like DJ Harvey's idiosyncratic Sarcastic Disco, the techno-friendly Droid, the intimate Music For Dancers and more.

Still, until fairly recently it was unlikely you could catch a night like September 29th, when you could catch Brazilian Chilean genre-shifter Matias Aguayo at Making Shapes, head east dark techno maestro Andy Stott in a downtown warehouse at a party thrown by recently-opened record store Mt. Analog, and then finish the night at Sarcastic Disco, in a hangar-like warehouse behind a go-kart track in Burbank.

That's the beauty of the burgeoning scene -- some nights festival headliners Simian Mobile Disco will spin a set for 400 people instead of 4,000, and on others underground Berlin fixture Move D will set up shop, both likely at a converted industrial space somewhere on the periphery of downtown.

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The promoter who threw these events asked not to be named, as her parties don't always have the necessary permits and have been shut down by the police before. But she says that in recent years growing audiences have meant that these events can bring in higher quality international talent, and the artists' labels are helping fund some of them.