- Walk down the right alley of the right industrial zone on a Saturday night in Los Angeles, and you might stumble across Midnight Lovers, an afterhours affair that has recently hosted names like DJ Garth and Omar-S. For its latest installment, the party lined up an extended set from Force Of Nature, the Japanese DJ and production duo of KZA and DJ Kent.
As guests arrived, Washington D.C. DJ Navbox warmed up the floor with a steady flow of house tunes. Throughout the set, he kept the rhythms restrained, relying mainly on deep, moody chords. Given the venue's relatively small size, a healthy dance floor had already formed by the time I arrived, and stayed packed until late.
When Navbox mixed into his final tune around 2 AM, KZA and DJ Kent appeared behind the booth to a round of applause. The duo took their time cueing up as the track played out, with KZA sporting sunglasses in the dimly-lit room. Suddenly a brief synthesizer interlude gave way to a dubwise rhythm that turned out to be "Bad Boys" by Inner Circle, the theme song from TV crime show Cops. Force Of Nature were instantly in full effect.
Conveying a sense of humor through a DJ set isn't always easy, but the duo's cavalier attitude made the leftfield opening work beautifully, commanding the crowd's attention and setting the expectation that anything could happen. Ultimately, the intro was the most brazen moment of the set, which quickly settled into the uptempo grooves of disco-inflected house and thumping electro basslines. While most of KZA and DJ Kent's mixes were imperceptible blends, a few exceptions—like when they cut to a snippet of a drum fill, then to Aril Brikha's "Eat the Heart"—created peaks of excitement.
To my ears, the sound was better in the smaller space than the average LA afterhours. This allowed for wilder selections later in the night, like "DR-1" by rRoxymore / Oni Ayhun / Aquarian Jugs / Jaguar Woman and Moscoman's remix of Jakam's "Wabi Sabi."
While some folks were clearly there for Force Of Nature, the crowd seemed slightly older and less familiar with the underground scene than attendees of comparable parties. Several discussions about EDM caught my ear, and there were even a few Kardashian emulators, looking bewildered by the warehouse-style accommodations. Nevertheless, aficionados and first-timers all got into the music. But I did wonder if the less seasoned crowd might have kept the DJs from spinning off into weirder territory.