giant and dave dean are back at avalon hollywood

Dave Dean and his Giant club brand are back as Saturday-night co-promoters at Avalon Hollywood (pictured above). Dean was booted from the club in 2006, with rumors claiming that he took too much of the door for the owners' taste. He went on to establish Giant at nearby rival club Vanguard, and the two battled for talent and ticket-buyers. Avalon's lead promoter, Garrett Chau, left late last year to take a job "to oversee the global expansion of Lollapalooza," he told us, leaving an opening at the venue. Vanguard, meanwhile, appears to be void of promoters and upcoming events (its website's calendar is virtually empty).

Way more background on this than you probably want in a post by yours truly at LA Weekly.


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nightriders celebrate debut

Boston duo Nightriders (Matt Johnson and Joe Faria) is celebrating its recent debut album, Take My Hand. The pair met at the original Avalon in Boston and have been laying down tracks in recent years (see "Shakedown," above).

The Nightriders' track "Fevah" has already been featured on the Playstation 2 game Dance Dance Revolution and the duo's remixes and productions have have gotten spins from the likes of Roger Sanchez, Groove Armada, Felix Da Housecat, Junior Sanchez, Kerri Chandler, Dennis Ferrer, Andy Caldwell, Dave Dresden, Mark Farina, King Britt and Martijn ten Velden.

Thursday notes:

-In my column early last year on dance music site Beatport I noted that the proprietors were prevented from selling hip-hop tracks because most rap was controlled by major labels infatuated with the limited-use DRM technology that Apple's iTunes used. The idea behind DRM (digital rights management) was to limit the amount of times you could copy a track or what devices it could play on, ostensibly to prevent mass file sharing. Unfortunately, DRM doesn't work with many DJ software programs, and hip-hop spinners had to resort to file sharing, stealing or CD-ripping instead of online purchases. An ounce of prevention, maybe, but the music industry was also shooting itself in the foot by preventing an influential demographic from spreading its music. At Beatport -- which I said was showing the industry the way forward with DJ-software-friendly MP3 and ".wav" file downloads -- its electronic dance music catalog was dominating the DJ-focused online music market. But it had to wait for DRM restrictions to be lifted to tap into the lucrative hip-hop DJ market. Fast forward to today: Apple is offering DRM-free files from the EMI label on iTunes, and Universal Music Group has said it will roll out DRM-free music on select, non-iTunes sites.

Now Miami New Times reports that Beatport is set to roll out its hip-hop store sometime this winter, in early 2008. The site, Beatsource, will be separate from Beatport. "This is a DJ-friendly site for the DJ, just like Beatport is," François Baptiste, the site's urban music development manager, tells New Times. "The music is sold in non-DRM, non-encrypted files. If a DJ is at a club and is like, 'Damn, I need that new, hot song,' you can't directly download from iTunes, because it's a whole long process ... Ours are sold as MP3s, MP4s, and .wavs — they can download it right through the wi-fi in the club. Go to Beatsource.com and — bam! — they can play it instantaneously ..."

-Trentemoller stars in my weekly dance club recommendations for the Los Angeles area.

-Ever on the cutting edge, LA Weekly's annual "Best of L.A." finally gets around to recognizing Avalon Hollywood as "best big time" dance club. " Of course, if you prefer your information in a little more timely manner, you could have checked out LA CityBeat in August of 2006 for a similar revelation (in its own annual "best of" issue).

Thursday notes:

-My Groundswell column in this week's LA CityBeat gets the L.A.-area print exclusive with the Chemical Brothers (and the duo's show this weekend at Nocturnal in downtown Los Angeles). I argue that, with the Chems' latest, We Are The Night, the pair is making the best music of all the surviving dance revivalists out there (Daft Punk, Underworld, et. al.). "I’m pretty happy with the music we just made, really," Chemical bro Ed Simons tell me. "If we don’t feel that way, it’s time to call it a day."

-The Los Angeles Times takes a look at the dance music resurgence through the lens of L.A. super-clubs, most prominently via Avalon Hollywood and its forward-thinking "Fall-Winter Series."

-Also in the Times, a little love for one of the 'blogga's favorite new artists, Sam Sparro.

-LA Weekly takes a look at Datarock, which is coming to town.

-Colette (above) stars in my weekly dance club recommendations for the Los Angeles area.

Turning a new leaf: It's one of the hottest days of the summer, and it's still July, but those of us in the media business, particularly the magazine game, often have to think months ahead. The same goes for the smarter heads in the club biz. Over at Avalon Hollywood, they've already got most of their fall and winter bookings locked in, and it sounds like good times are on the horizon.

The Saturday night Avaland crew (Garrett Chau, Craig Edwards, Damian Murphy, Kobi Danan and Erika Slouber along with Liquified, One Promotions and Spundae) is starting to fire on all cylinders, taking the club game in L.A. from a trance-crazed, glow-stick experience to one where good music and atmosphere trump candy and beer. The guys have said it before, but it's now becoming a reality: Avaland wants to be to L.A. what the taste-making club Fabric is to London.

With that in mind, the Avaland crew has announced it will launch a "Fall-Winter Series" that will bring top talent as well as adventurous acts for a crowd that they say is starting to be trusting and almost built-in. (Previously, crowds in L.A. showed for the bigger name trance DJs but often shied away from anyone less-known). What's more, the club is starting to book spinners who were locked into exclusive contracts with rival promoters. It's breaking those locks as their contracts expire. The night's second anniversary happens Aug. 4 with Felix Da Housecat, Tom Stephan and Pier Bucci at the controls. Then John Digweed is back at the venue Sept. 1 to kick off the Fall-Winter Series, and Tiefschwartz, Loco Dice, Sander Kleinenberg, Adam Beyer, Laurent Garnier, Claude VonStroke and Erick Morillo are confirmed for upcoming dates as well. And, speaking of Fabric, that club's famous "Wiggle" party moves west to Avalon with Terry Francis, Eddie Richards, Nathan Coles and Get Physical's DJ T programming the music (date TBA). The Avaland folks have also been fostering local talent, with residences from the Droog crew, Trent Cantrelle and Kazell's Influx Audio.

Promoters explained to us recently that the idea is to tap into those club-goers who have been shying away from the crowded, sweaty, and cheese-fed dance floors but who still want to experience edgy music. Those packed dance-floor moments will still happen with "Late Night Sessions" bookings that will have big names scheduled specifically for wee hours spin sessions. But the venue also wants to see more live-like performances and, perhaps, less four-on-the-floor, ad-infinitum DJ mixes. Avaland wants to become a cultural event, (thus the word "season," as in a Philharmonic season), and not just place to party.

(above: roger s. releases himself at avaland)