It's the witching hour, and VI:BRA—Miel Franco Pérez, founder of ¡Dyked!—is dressed in a simple blue bandeau, sarong and long white wig as Princess Kida from the 2001 film Atlantis: The Lost Empire. As they perform a live DJ set at the late-night warehouse Plumhouse, just west of Salt Lake City's downtown core, an 800-strong, packed-house crowd of sapphic, non-binary and trans attendees goes absolutely wild.
It's a bacchanal of alternative sexuality. The stage is an altar of marigolds and painted skulls in a salute to Día de los Muertos, flanked on both sides by writhing, glistening pole dancers. There's an intentional sacredness that permeates the space too, a feeling engendered by Franco Pérez's invitation to honor those who have passed on as well as to celebrate the authentic identities of their attendees.
As a queer, agender Mexican immigrant, Franco Pérez knows they and their community need a space to feel safe—to dance, to express and to connect as attendees and artists alike. Local, queer DJs play a variety of genres throughout the night and by highlighting femme, sapphic, trans and non-binary artists who may not be taken into consideration for other events, ¡Dyked! has become a premier platform for queer talent to directly connect with their community.
"I craved the ability to explore and navigate my queerness in a way that was approachable" Franco Pérez says. "You also add the context of being POC, which it's like a whole other ballpark."
As Franco Pérez's set concludes, the courtyard is illuminated with fire dancers. They spin brightly lit batons alongside aerialists as a surging crowd circles in awe.
Lush drapes, curtains and pillows fill the outdoor space as patrons bundle together. They share the warmth of cacao and hot tea as the brisk autumn evening turns into night. Playfulness and dress-up is celebrated, with body painting, makeup with face gems, tarot readings and some botanical flogging provided by local queer-led farming co-op Mobile Moon.
Franco Pérez briefly pauses when thinking about the central reason for their work at ¡Dyked!.
"I was craving representation in my field," they tell City Weekly.
The rise of alternative communities like those of Franco Pérez, alongside the ascent of contemporary electronic dance music (EDM) in the broader zeitgeist of the past two decades is undeniable. Today, richly interwoven contemporary EDM subcultures exist throughout the Intermountain West and North America at large. In that landscape, Salt Lake City is emerging, somewhat surprisingly, as a driver of broader swaths of the EDM culture. And its outsized impact on North American dance music often manifests in unexpected ways.
Just look at the 360-degree sets of local promoters Mutiny Music Collective, which have quickly enjoyed viral exposure, as well as superstar DJ/producer Kaskade's ongoing global influence and the struggles of more "underground" collectives and local artists emerging and establishing themselves. It's clear that the EDM status quo in Salt Lake City is finding itself as a substantial cultural force.
A plethora of mainstream and underground promotions call Salt Lake home, from visible outfits like V2 or LNE Presents to homegrown affairs like Doof, IYKYK HiFi+, Ranger Sound Car, Social Disco Club, ETA45MINS, Nightfreq, Distorted Soulz, Jaguar Occult, New City Movement, FERVOR, SubCurrent Sound, Incorrekt, LFG! and Defiance. Local producers and DJs are rising, too—those like Fransis Derelle, Kollaba and Gaszia (formerly X&G), ZandZ, MALIXE, OBAŸASHI, Miss Maenad, Alex Unger and The DirtNap.
It's a bit of a mouthful as the local culture bursts at the seams with talent.
As the night rolls on at Plumhouse, the entrance queue grows and wraps around the block. In an ironic twist, several groups of cisgender men are begging at the door to be let in, creating minor chaos and frustration for the security and for Franco Pérez. Media managers for the venue accidentally posted the event on social media, prompting regular after-hours attendees to show up, only to be denied entry based on their self-identified gender.
The explosive growth of ¡Dyked! seems even more remarkable considering how rare sapphic spaces like lesbian nightclubs are and the historical violence against them. Accordingly, ¡Dyked! exists not to exclude cis men, but rather for lifting marginalized individuals to create a safe community where healing is possible.
"A big value is that I don't want to gender police people," Franco Pérez explained. "It's not my intention to look at someone and be like, 'Well, you're a man.' But I'm asking people that are coming into the space to know where they're coming into."
The event's tagline is "Portal of Possibility," and both the theme and the event itself are meant to address a lack of representation and safety in the underground electronic music scene. By creating a space for queerness to exist outside mainstream culture, traditional identities are exposed to the otherization and ostracization that marginalized groups deal with at all times. The exclusion of some is not born out of animosity; rather, it seeks to build empathy between traditionally marginalized communities and mainstream culture.
"As we get bigger, we're going to be needing different tactics and ways to just keep the container," Franco Pérez notes. "To reiterate, it's not even about the exclusion of men. But as marginalized individuals, we need a specific container to be able to heal."
As their community grows, perhaps only one thing remains certain for Franco Pérez—whatever realities the portals they open might entail, they'll probably be looking to hire a few new bouncers to help handle their growing crowd.
Into the VOID
At BLAQ VOID, the ethos embraces a raging, wholly inclusive, all-night party where attendees trust promoters to book forward-thinking electronic music acts under their playfully mysterious marketing strategy. The more dangerously exciting aspects of "the underground" can be felt not only in the space itself, but also in how they curate the events.
There's a flier formula in which the artist's nom de plume is spelled out in question marks, like a game of hangman, with a single letter and the artist's top three labels revealed. That's why there's a sense of ominous wonder when entering a BLAQ VOID show, be it via secret tunnel or up massive concrete ramps in a multi-level garage with diabolically lit passageways and massive black banners displaying the promotions logo—alongside stylized skulls and Satanic nuns adorned with oral bondage balls.
While BLAQ VOID founders Drue Olsen, Brandon Gebo and Randy Jimenez are not overly attached to mainstream success, their events present an accessible gateway to the underground for attendees who may be more used to mainstream experiences.
"It's very reminiscent of OG rave culture from back in the day," Gebo explains to City Weekly. "You'd get a message and there wasn't very much information, and I think that was what played into the allure of going to events like that."
Officially 6 years old, BLAQ VOID seeks to remove the stigma of these events with a focus on building community. Their biweekly events generally sell out or reach capacity, and that matters for an organization that emphasizes a culture of giving back. It's about building trust with the broader culture of Salt Lake City and removing the stigma of the electronic dance music scene.
So, how does BLAQ VOID see themselves and SLC's underground? "We are not the counterculture," Olsen proudly proclaims. "We are the culture."
A Dark Horse
A gigantic temporary stage has been erected on a grassy field behind LaVell Edwards Stadium in Provo, and as he performs, Ryan Raddon can't help but stick his tongue out in glee.
Better known as the globetrotting superstar DJ Kaskade, Raddon is back in his college hometown for Brigham Young University's homecoming game. As he performs, BYU's beloved mascot Cosmo the Cougar crowdsurfs over thousands of fans jam-packed in celebration.
It's an unexpectedly rowdy party scene for the supposedly conservative epicenter for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But it's hard not to let loose a little when a top-shelf talent like Kaskade comes to town.
After all, Raddon's many accolades and accomplishments include eight Grammy nominations in his ever-growing trophy case. There's also his Kx5 collaboration with electronic music titan Deadmau5, the forward-thinking, brisk-speaking and notoriously fickle Canadian DJ/producer. One obvious benchmark of the success of that partnership: while Raddon performed as the first in-game DJ for the Super Bowl earlier this year, he played Kx5's breakout "Escape" (feat. Hayla) to hundreds of millions of viewers during one of the broadcast's early commercial outros.
But for all the splendor of his lifestyle and every spectacular show he's been a part of, Salt Lake City still holds a special place in Raddon's life.
"My ties to Salt Lake City, and Utah in general, will always be deep," Raddon tells City Weekly over email. "That's the place I first started dreaming of creating this life, and the place where I started stepping into it."
Along with those sentiments, Kaskade has a series of upcoming Christmas shows scheduled at Kingsbury Hall featuring his unconventional mix of outstanding electronic dance music. It's a manifestation of his ties to the state and his ongoing commitment to his foundational LDS religious beliefs.
"Salt Lake City is a dark horse," Raddon says. "Nobody expects it to succeed with any type of counterculture, yet the whole world is fascinated with what's brewing there. Many of the best musicians I've worked with are from Utah."
Raddon says there's an unfair snobbery directed at Salt Lake by other cities. But he adds that the underdog status presents an advantage to local promoters, who are "pulling off parties that scale to some of the best ones in the world."
"I might get criticized for saying this, but hear me out," he says. "SLC comes across as a sort of younger sibling to LA and possibly Denver. Without question, Salt Lake does have a heavy religious presence. I think it pushes people either to push back or find their way within, and pushing back is an act of rebellion, which isn't to say that is bad. That self-confidence that comes from questioning everything and coming to your own conclusions is crucial in growing up."
Raddon said that Salt Lake City presents an environment where people are pushed to identify as either "this or that." But that same dynamic also leads Utahns to say "no thanks" to preconceptions and, instead, to create their own organically grassroots landscape.
"The other cities in The West don't have that same pressure," he added, "which also prevents them from having that revolutionary energy."
For its seemingly drab place on the outskirts of the American cultural tapestry, Salt Lake City can serve as a colorful backdrop for live music experiences: one example being Kanye West's Sunday Service at the Gateway Plaza during LDS General Conference in October of 2019. And Raddon is right: in Salt Lake City, any response to the overarching dominant culture is strongly reciprocated. The result is an incredibly vibrant counterculture.
Maybe that's what Raddon means when he talks about the revolutionary energy that pulses throughout SLC's mainstream and underground dance music scenes.
Our Culture
It's spooky season at the Utah Fairgrounds as the 20th annual edition of SLC-based promoter V2's Get Freaky Halloween Festival kicks off, and co-founder Brandon Fullmer is in the holiday spirit. He's dressed as a deviant droog from Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange as the first acts take the stage.
Fullmer's personality isn't nearly as extreme as Kubrick's maladjusted Alex, of course. But V2's reign as the preeminent large-scale electronic dance music event producer in the region is largely a result of Fullmer and business partner Jeremy Moreland's decades of work advocating to establish the electronic dance music scene in Salt Lake City.
Earlier that week, as Moreland joined Fullmer at The People's Coffee for a conversation with City Weekly, the pair explained that in their earlier years, city authorities had issues with V2 that led to difficulties getting permits.
"They didn't really like what we were doing," Fullmer recalls. "They didn't understand what we were trying to accomplish, so permitting was hard. They thought it was drug parties."
There's still a familiar friction between authorities and the V2 promoters, though. But that effort to legitimize their events is more than worth it to Moreland and Fullmer.
"We have permits," Fullmer deadpans when pressed to elaborate on their ongoing relationship with regulators.
Moreland is straight to the point too. "This is our culture," he says. "We've been doing this a very long time—well over 25 years for the both of us."
Moreland says he was drawn to underground culture because it was so inviting as a place where one is accepted regardless of lifestyle.
"You are essentially a family," he says. "We're a big family that understands and loves this music, and the vibes and the energy that comes with it. To me, it changed my life."
Nowadays, V2 is the preeminent electronic dance music event producer in Utah, and one of the leaders in the western United States in sheer volume of booking artists and crowd size. They throw several major annual festivals at the Great Saltair and Utah Fairgrounds, including their crown jewel Das Energi Festival, which regularly draws thousands of fans across three massive stages.
V2 has captured the attention of key industry heavyweights, including the likes of Pasquale Rotella, the head of all-encompassing brand Insomniac. Rotella notably attended Das Energi this year and later that night was spotted at after-hours venue Plumhouse. So how does V2 see Salt Lake City's influence on the bigger scene in North America?
"It's growing. It is on the map. And I'm not gonna say that we did it ourselves," Fullmer readily admits. "These smaller production companies are extremely important to the culture."
Fuller and Moreland are definitely supportive of smaller production companies and the underground scene in general. That commitment in action is mostly unseen: for example, V2 moved the date of its popular Get Funky Festival this past summer to accommodate revelers who wanted to attend regional Burning Man event Element 11.
In recent years, several key underground groups have decided to go completely off the map by migrating their events to the Jenkstar Ranch, Element 11 and Burning Man. That includes groups like CataLün Village, the SophistaPirates, Camp Cicadia, Lost Highway and Wasteland Caravan. In the hazy, oppressively hot desert dust, those groups are enjoying a newfound creative freedom that is unencumbered by the many obligations and risks that go along with throwing parties within the visibility of city limits.
"These other production companies are really good at helping feed the evolution of the culture," Moreland says. "The biggest thing is realizing that we do support them, and we do understand the importance of what they're doing."
Although they respect all independent event promoters, according to the V2 founders, there's one group that comes straight to mind as exemplary when considering the entire mainstream and underground Salt Lake City scenes.
"Mutiny—they're doing a really great job at doing something different, doing something cool," Moreland says.
Relentless Creativity
A warm autumn day falls over Salt Lake as Danny Krotz and Alex Prevatt meet City Weekly at 3 Cups in Holladay. It's a contrast to their usual work environment: a pounding explosion of dance music from the most forward-thinking artists in the industry.
Along with lighting director Benjamin Vazquez, videographer Miles Chisolm and photographers Matthew Dippel and Sebastian Callahan, Krotz and Prevatt's Mutiny Music Collective has landed prime slots on key outlets including DJ Mag and 1001Tracklists. Tens of millions of online impressions and buzz among industry professionals illustrate the impact of Mutiny's work. It's proven to be a recipe for success for Mutiny—both in their sellout crowds and their larger cultural impact outside the state.
Mutiny shows merge aspects of the underground (industrial aesthetics, unique settings, a wild, chaotic feeling of a show) with parts of the mainstream (a licensed bar, security and emergency personnel, a 1 a.m. standard ending time).
The events are often debuts of influential artists breaking into the market for the first time (like neo-wunderkind Knock2), or who explicitly list Boxpac as the first stop on a new tour (like French house music maestro Dombresky) or who reach out to the producers to book special one-offs due to the viral hype of the videos at their 360-degree Boxpac shows (like gangsta-house pioneer Dr. Fresch).
Mutiny's creativity and innovation drives progress forward. It's a counterexample to local artists or promoters who fail to grow or become better versions of themselves by failing to continue iterating.
Prevatt and Krotz just wrapped up the one-year anniversary of the Boxpac Project, hosted in a nondescript white industrial building that used to be a crate warehouse. It's a massive, three-dimensional canvas to create their immersive, experiential electronic dance music and event productions.
"It's in an industrial park, you have to cross the railroad tracks to get there. The train actively drives through," Prevatt says. "It's super raw. It feels like there should absolutely not be concerts happening."
Beyond Boxpac, Prevatt and Krotz have stunned audiences with events at the Fear Factory and the Golden Nugget Casino in Wendover. Now, the pair are gearing up for their annual two-day New Year's Eve extravaganza at The Complex. There's also new ventures within Mutiny, such as their merch line with local artist Kuya Allen and potential expansion into artist and label management.
But what stands out is Prevatt and Krotz's optimism and competence when interfacing with regulators and attendees alike. They also share a unique creative spirit, an unending work ethic and fidelity to their personal tastes while building their creative community. The result is a feedback loop from fans to promoters to talent that makes the experience exceptional for all involved. "Everything we do has to be a part of that relationship," Krotz tells City Weekly.
With that sort of ongoing relationship between their community, amongst their place in the richly developing tapestry of Salt Lake City's electronic dance music scene, it seems a new frontier in EDM might be emerging. As Salt Lake City grows into a truly global city with its second Winter Olympics Games coming in 2034—and all of the accompanying business development—the burgeoning electronic dance music scene continues to evolve as the city's popular growth shows no signs of slowing.
The underlying force propelling the culture forward, according to Mutiny? "It's this relentless drive to keep creating," Krotz says.
With so many creatives surrounding Salt Lake City's various EDM scenes sharing a similar energy to Krotz and Prevatt's, only time will tell to what heights the culture will rise. But it's sure to be forward thinking, as always.
