the crown jewel of u.s. clubbing?

Beatportal today has a long and thorough article by Terry Church about the thriving Los Angeles club scene, with the title, "Los Angeles claims USA's dance music crown." The piece touches on the nu electro boom, noted as "hipster music," but focuses mainly on the techno resurgence represented by Avalon Hollywood and the Droog, Droid Behavior and Compression events. A sample:

“We took over the bookings of Saturday nights at Avalon after its former promoters Giant left,” says Garrett Chau [pictured above; photo by Chris Soltis].

“We quickly realized that there was no point going head to head with Giant on big name DJs because whoever had the biggest DJ that night would win.

“It’s not beneficial for the scene if promoters compete on big name line-ups as it eventually becomes economically unviable.”

Like a supermarket price war, promoters often cannibalize each other if they compete by booking bigger and more famous artists, so Garrett and Avalon’s director for electronic music Craig Edwards decided to cut their own path.

“I’ve been into techno for many years, and me and Garrett decided to go down that route,” explains Craig.