Audiotistic Balances Music, Spectacle--Barely

Going into a large-scale rave is not unlike entering the Las Vegas strip. Both offer sensory barrages, escape from the everyday and the opportunity to squander plenty of money. The rave culture also seems to be following the Las Vegas model of trying to constantly outdo itself. Like Vegas, which sports newer, bigger hotels on a regular basis, raves are increasingly about being bigger and better than the one before. Audiotistic 2001, held Saturday at the sold-out Long Beach Convention Center, was a rave that would have done Vegas proud.

Set up as five separate “clubs” united by a common love for beats--jungle, house, progressive, future jazz and hip-hop/turntablism were the musical motifs--Audiotistic turned the Convention Center into an orgy for the senses, with laser shows, giant video screens projecting images that ranged from the performers to animated movies, vendors at every turn selling a potpourri of glowing items, and enough beats per minute to jump-start a 1972 Dodge.

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As raves follow the path of more, more, more, the danger is that the music threatens to become less important than the event. In the early hours of Audiotistic, that appeared to be the case, but after the initial wave of curiosity that found a diverse crowd of kids wandering from stage to stage, the music took over.

There were several highlights to choose from: L.A. hip-hop favorite Dilated Peoples, whose roof-raising, 45-minute set covered ground from soulful party grooves to politically charged rhymes; turntable masters the Beat Junkies, a quartet that dazzled with its syncopated scratching; DJ Raymond Roker’s frenetic fusion of techno and prog-rock; Konflict’s rapid-fire drum-and-bass explosion; Mistress Barbara’s dance-heavy techno beats; Roger Sanchez’s global house mix; and a crowd-pleasing set of heavy jams from Jurassic 5.

Aside from the dilemma at shows of this size--while you are at one stage you’re missing something good at another--Audiotistic 2001 managed to be all things to all people, whether one was looking for a party, a dance club or a hip-hop concert. But as raves continue to grow, one has to wonder how much bigger they can get without sacrificing the music. Given how tightly Audiotistic 2001 walked the line, the answer would appear to be not much.