Space Yacht: Speed Freak at Exchange LA

Speed Freak is Space Yacht's answer to a question LA dancefloors have been asking loudly for about three years now: how fast is too fast? On September 19 at Exchange LA, the answer is somewhere north of 150 BPM and nobody's apologizing. Music starts at 10 PM.

The sound

The bill runs on hard bounce, hard techno, and hard groove. They're related but they are not the same thing, and the difference is the whole point of a night like this.

Hard groove is the swung, rolling end of the spectrum, the stuff that keeps a room moving for hours without beating it into the floor. Hard techno is the straight-line version, stripped down and relentless. Hard bounce comes in sideways from the Dutch and Australian side of the family, with that off-kilter kick that makes people who swore they hated hardstyle suddenly find themselves jumping.

Space Yacht has run weekly and monthly parties across LA for the better part of a decade. They're good at booking the sound six months before it gets big, which is usually why their rooms feel busier than the flyer suggests they should.

The building

Exchange LA occupies the old Los Angeles Stock Exchange at 618 S Spring St, a 1930s Art Deco trading floor turned into a multi-level club. The main room has a genuinely tall ceiling, marble detail on the walls, and a sound system aimed straight down at a floor that used to host stockbrokers. Hard techno in a former bank is the kind of joke that writes itself, and the room delivers on it.

There are several levels, so if the main floor gets too much you can climb and watch from above for a while.

Practical stuff

Entry is free with RSVP before 11 PM, then $15. RSVP early. The line on Spring St gets long around eleven and that cutoff is real.

Take the Metro B or D Line to Pershing Square and walk two blocks. Parking downtown on a Saturday is possible but you'll pay event rates, and rideshare surge after 2 AM around Spring Street is steep.

More raves in LA and other things happening Downtown this weekend.