Perspiration soaks the under arms. Already the feel of cotton sticks to the skin. The weather is much too humid for the first week in the fifth month of the year.
A body plunges to the pavement. “Dude, I’m soooo drunk,” a post-pubescent voice yells across the dark parking lot. Standing in a line of ten folks deep, behind a gang of Koreans speaking in their native tongue, the smell of burnt ash thickens the air. Their cigar smoking proves all too nauseating. Even the door guy reading identification brushes his hand across his nose.
Inside the foyer stands two men; burly, goateed, and bald scanning e-Tickets. Voices shout in the distance, “Sounds like they’re playing bingo,” over there in the room to the right. “Naw bro, it’s a drag show.”
The beating of deep ambient thumps that surface from around a corner peeks the interest of the bros more than the “Bye Felicia” contest. Their intuitions prove correct as a left turn into the main room reveals why this party matters.
If the party promoters are willing to work with venues, owners, or managers outside of their comfort zone, then the party matters.
Twenty years earlier, a movement started when twenty-somethings; Kazel, Damien and Delvyn then called Liquid Groove, threw its first soiree at a warehouse called Chambers in the city’s red-light district. A name change later, now Liquified, the promoters returned to the original warehouse, also with a name change, where it all began.
Where you throw your party matters.
Club Jungle throbs as yesteryear’s PLURs wearing 36” flairs glide across the massive 10,000 square-feet space, queens sashay on wooden tiles, as Kardashian imposters tip their noses in the air at shirtless bartenders.
If your sound system was designed by a former NASA employee then your party matters.
Two SH96HO + TH118* are enclosed in sleek black cabinets. The 18” subwoofer packs a four-way power punch to the balls. The intelligent Pure Groove Sound System* screams quality over quantity. The acoustics alone is worth all two thousand and five hundred pennies paid for entry. One spectator stares into the woofers and the force of the sound waves slowly pulls his slender frame into its hold. “That shit’s loud.” Someone complains. “Yeah, we’re way too old.”
A headlining electronic god makes the party matter.
The stage is decorated in a crystalloid hallucination. Blue skies and green lasers splash across the faces of gridded triangles. In view through the polyhedron window stands the most oft voted “World’s Best DJ.” A thunderous applause ignites as he winks. Only a rock god commands such emphasis.
Tonight Aleksander-AKA Sasha-Paul Cole is the rock god, ahem, electronic god-defender of glow stick spinners, lazily dressed bros wearing ball caps and cargos, 40 year-olds backpackers, and a mother who inhaled to squeeze in a bikini tube. Most impressive, shoved shoulder-to-shoulder are the pink furry boot minions-Buford Street’s baby ravers who admire his royal Welshness. Many of who were not spermatozoa when their parents probably tweaked at a Sasha rave in the late 80’s. The ability to draw a mother and daughter raving under the same roof is well, frightening.
At the stroke of midnight, the GRAMMY nominated “Watching Cars Go By” remixer launches into a battlefield of fist-pumping rush; dizzying build-ups and shattering bass drops. The “If You Believe” producer is not the pinup for playing straight house music but he later dabbles in the deep that makes the party even more digestible. Critics will always parley over Sasha’s playlists but the event’s motive lies not in the music’s context as the party’s subtext.
Twenty years in the game and still relevant makes your party matter.
This party-cum-music festive is a homecoming sentiment. Weeks earlier, reminiscence spread across social media from those who stumbled out of Chambers the next day, at noon, after Sasha first played Liquid Groove’s Atlanta debut in the mid-90’s. Over the years and many times over, Liquified has personified and willed its muscle at defining ATL’s nightlife. Given the city’s saturated underground music scene, Liquified performed a rarity these days, pulling off a party that actually matters.
Congratulations to Liquified 20 year anniversary.
words: aj dance
(above) visual: aj art
*Pure Groove Sound System
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Tags: Atlanta Georgia, Club Jungle, house music, Liquified, Liquified 20 year anniversary, progressive house music, Sasha