Author Archives: Justin Ramsay Johnson

“So when I was 15 I started doing ecstasy…” Dylan Hom, aka “DJ Wildboy”, formerly “DJ Gengar” (yes, like the poke’mon) casually begins in response to my inquiry as to how he entered the rave scene (as we sit for a highly informal interview in a Brooklyn apartment that may or may not be littered and wreak with substances of varying legality).

Such a turn of dialogue is not exactly out of the ordinary for Dylan; I should know, as this is not the first time we’ve hung out: a night I [barely] remember like it was yesterday, at an event showcasing Dylan’s specific EDM (electronic dance music) genre of choice, “hardstyle” and its close relative “hardcore”, titled “Toxic Synergy 2”, footage of which Mr. Gengar was happy to grant me permission to lift.

To actually describe what I saw that night would be to declare the hardstyle scene to be everything and nothing like what the mainstream media is making the entire EDM rave scene out to be, in wake of overdose deaths in relation to the party-drug “molly”, or the string of raids on underground shows thanks to the crackdown by the NYPD.

“I remember coming to shows as a kid literally just to dance; now I’ll come and see kids literally rolling on the floor tweaked out of their minds” a veteran raver told me.

So are ravers just a bunch of degenerate druggies?

Well, I while I could say that half the people from the entourage Dylan invited lamented how they couldn’t remember a thing about the event beyond the first five minutes of having entered, I could also point out the tons of ravers I’ve personally met throughout the scene, such as the one I just previously quoted, or the following of “straight-edge” ravers, or folks who go to shows entirely for the music totally stone-sober.

But at the very least, can’t we say they’re all a bunch of total weirdos?

Well, I can’t universally say most definitely, but I can say there may or may not have been a point in the night of Toxic Synergy when I accused Dylan of having slipped something in my drink that was causing me to hallucinate as I could have sworn I had just stepped on a rolled up carpet only for said carpet to wriggle like a worm just to stand up and walk away on two feet.

And Dylan may or may not have laughed it off and casually explained to me that said hallucination was not a hallucination at all and was actually a regular of the scene who got his jollies off going to shows disguised as a carpet and being repeatedly stepped on.

And I may or may not have reacted wearing the same face you probably are right now after having just read that.

But what I definitely did see that night was how everyone, from wriggling carpet monsters, to folks dressed like living anime characters, to scantly clad females aaaaaand males, and even clean-cut professional looking dudes in slacks and button-downs (I swear I seen’t it), all these folks commingled together, without any semblance of bad-vibes or altercation. I even awoke the next day with a picture on my phone taken by someone I didn’t know with my arm around another someone I also didn’t know. Literally thousands of people together just having fun without judgement, with the lone act of violence that night taking place after this legal event already ended and actually on part of the police, when a uniformed officer for some reason full-on punched a female-raver in the face which innumerable witnesses corroborated to be entirely without cause or provocation.

Was this night a universal representative for the entire hardstyle scene? Probably not. And are all the negative headlines we see about EDM merely statistical anomalies that come with any genre that gains some mainstream attention? Who’s to say; but it will definitely be interesting to see how the genre and subculture develop, as well as it’s lesser known off-shoots.