FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

How Drumcell Helped Turn Los Angeles Into A Global Techno Capital

How the Droid Behavior co-founder built a scene from scratch.

For all its reputation as an rave and EDM capital, Los Angeles never had much resembling an international techno scene until Drumcell and his Droid Behavior posse started throwing event in the early 2000s. For 16 years, the LA-born producer Moe Espinosa and his partners Vidal and Vangelis Vargas (who produce techno as Raíz) made bringing techno to Tinsel Town their life's mission. And it worked, with LA now hosting multiple techno events every weekend, while the Droid Behavior crew tour their brand of decidedly non-West Coast sounding techno around the world.

Advertisement

Espinosa sat down with Rave Curious at the Vice studios by the beach in Venice, over an hour's drive from his end of East Los Angeles, to talk about what it took to build a scene from scratch, about this inspiration he took from Detroit and Chicago, and about the endless flights back and forth to Europe while keeping what he built at home alive.

For all its reputation as an rave and EDM capital, Los Angeles never had much resembling an international techno scene until Drumcell and his Droid Behavior posse started throwing event in the early 2000s. For 16 years, the LA-born producer Moe Espinosa and his partners Vidal and Vangelis Vargas (who produce techno as Raíz) made bringing techno to Tinsel Town their life's mission. And it worked, with LA now hosting multiple techno events every weekend, while the Droid Behavior crew tour their brand of decidedly non-West Coast sounding techno around the world.

Espinosa sat down with Rave Curious at the Vice studios by the beach in Venice, over an hour's drive from his end of East Los Angeles, to talk about what it took to build a scene from scratch, about this inspiration he took from Detroit and Chicago, and about the endless flights back and forth to Europe while keeping what he built at home alive.

Subscribe to the Rave Curious Podcast on iTunes or listen on Soundcloud, and get a new episode every other week, plus download past interviews with Adam Beyer, Chris Liebing, Danny Tenaglia, Radio Slave and more. While you're at it, you can also follow Rave Curious on Facebook and Twitter.

Subscribe to the Rave Curious Podcast on iTunes or listen on Soundcloud, and get a new episode every other week, plus download past interviews with Adam Beyer, Chris Liebing, Danny Tenaglia, Radio Slave and more. While you're at it, you can also follow Rave Curious on Facebook and Twitter.