Published August 1, 2024 by Brady Goodman-Williams
Contributors: Mason Ziluca
This past June, electronic music purveyors Framework and pioneering bass house label Night Bass Records made history with Night Bass City - Los Angeles Block Party, the first electronic music event to shut down Hollywood's iconic Las Palmas Avenue.
In the early hours of the evening, we caught the man of the hour for a quick chat at the Framework HQ. With bumping bass through the brick walls and his beautiful family in tow, LA mainstay Aaron Clevenger (aka AC Slater) gave us the rundown on the future of Night Bass, running the LA Marathon, and the best restaurants in the Valley for a date night.
AC Slater, Night Bass City
Tell us about Night Bass City and what we've got going on today?
Night Bass City was a concept I had many years ago. We've done it once before, in Chicago, in 2019, and then we had plans to do a bunch more different cities around the country. COVID happened, and that kind of got shelved. This year we're celebrating 10 years of Night Bass, so I went to Kobi Danan at Sound/Framework and I asked, “What can we do for 10 years? Let's do something big.” And he said, "We can close off the street. Let's do a block party." And it just fell into place. It's an incredible thing, because we did our first show at Sound in January 2014, over 10 years ago now. So we're literally doing this big block party right outside our home from day one.
Night Bass City
10 years is a long time. How have you seen the bass scene in LA change in those 10 years?
It's changed so much. When I started Night Bass in 2014, EDM was a new term and it was the biggest thing ever – Skrillex and Afrojack and David Guetta. But I didn't really fit into that, I just loved UK Bass music, Bass House and UK Garage.
Who were you listening to at that point?
Oh, man, early Gorgon City… we were coming out of dubstep but not like American dubstep - more like Croydon, London – Skream, Banga. A lot of UKG. And house music was sort of changing over there in the UK. So I thought "Let me just start my own party. Give it a shot." Sound offered to do it, and the first one went off. I started bringing people from the UK like Chris Lorenzo for the first time, Taiki Nulight, Shift K3y – all these people who now have great careers and are really big. It was just a really cool, exciting time. And even though EDM was flourishing and becoming this giant industry, it just proved that there was a place for this sort of underground music.
AC Slater, Night Bass City
I've been a raver since I was really young in the late 90s. I've always loved the community aspect of it, a beautiful thing that felt like a secret, and I always wanted to recapture that. Night Bass brought people together from all different backgrounds and the momentum just grew. And I always loved tape packs back in the day - these things where they would record the whole night at a rave and sell packs of cassette tapes with the recordings. You can hear the crowd and the sets and everything. You felt like you were there, so I was like, "I want to do that for my party." We would record all the sets with the crowd and everything, and we still do that for every set we've ever had at Sound, putting them up on SoundCloud and YouTube. It's become this huge community and we've done parties all over the world and it just feels amazing.
Even though you've thrown parties all over the world, do you feel a particular attachment to the LA crowds or performing in LA because you live here?
A huge attachment. It's just different. Just walking around with my kids and every person comes up so friendly and sweet, we all know each other. The Night Bass crew is really special everywhere, but LA is our home.
AC Slater at night bass city via Instagram
You also just ran the LA Marathon. That's not easy to do. Tell us about that experience?
I've been a runner for many, many years, but I've never done a marathon. I just love running – it’s sort of like my weird, Zen moment alone with no distractions. My friend was like, "Hey, what do you think about doing a marathon?" (He doesn't run at all.) And I was like, "Let's do the LA Marathon." He said "okay" and I told Soozie, my wife, who doesn't run either, and she was like, "I want to do it." So we just started training. It was so fun, pushing myself further, because the most I've ever done was a half marathon. It was just really exciting to push your body and push your mental wall. It was really hard. But it was exciting and fun. And I want to do another one.
AC Slater via Instagram
Where else do you love to go in the city for personal inspiration or during your downtime when you're not making music?
I will say that since having kids it's a lot harder to get out. Honestly, this sounds really lame and we already talked about this, but I love running. Like, I love running. I don't like to run on trails or tracks or anything. I love running through the city because I get to know the city. I lived downtown for nine years, and I would run from downtown out in different directions. And then we moved to the Valley a couple of years ago. I’d run like 10 miles in a direction and think "Oh, this is here. I want to check that out later." For me, a great way to see the city is to just run.
AC Slater and wife Soozie via Instagram
What places around town do you and your wife really love to go to as a family? Or for a date night?
Our favorite dinner restaurant is called Malama Pono, which is Hawaiian-inspired cuisine in Sherman Oaks. The tofu salad is so good. Other good dinner date spots near us are Anajak Thai, Casita, Bacari Sherman Oaks and a great dinner spot with kids is King’s Fish Grill in Calabasas. Our fave lunch spots are Claudine’s, Tel Aviv Fish Grill, The Sherman, and can’t go wrong with Granville. Random date recommendation is to take a pottery class at Bitter Root Pottery! We did the one in Beverly Hills on the rooftop and the class was so fun and the view was amazing!
AC Slater and wife Soozie at Night Bass City via Instagram
Do you have any memories of performing in LA where you thought "that was the peak venue, peak experience, peak moment?"
Man, I have to hit the archives... Before I moved here, I played Hard Halloween downtown and there was an after-party at Lot 613. Boys Noize was there and Jack Beats and just a bunch of DJs and it was just this dark, sweaty, hot, overpacked like insane venue... I can't even explain - it was just chaos. People were knocking things over, and every five minutes I was just like "what's going on," but it was just a good energy. I love that kind of thing about LA. Especially nowadays, I think there's a lot of that going on with warehouses. There's a lot of cool, raw energy. You know, the big mega clubs are cool, but I also love that sort of dark secret side. It's really inspiring to discover those things. We did our Night Bass nine-year anniversary in an illegal warehouse downtown, and we had, like, 300 people there. And we spread the word through just an info-line. People were like, “Where the hell are we?" I love that kind of stuff. LA has a lot of that right now.
What's next for you and Night Bass?
We're still celebrating our 10 year anniversary all year long. I've been writing a lot of music, kind of refocusing on myself. But with Night Bass, specifically, developing more new talent, and working with some more established artists. We went into this direction of working with younger newer artists, which I loved, but now I'm kind of interested in working on bigger projects. I have some really cool, exciting artists coming up, like Reece Rosé. He's really cool. He's in LA, does really unique stuff. A lot of new artists on Night Bass. We rebranded all our logos and everything because I wanted 10 years to come along and just be like "Boom! Everything's different now, but we're still here. And we're still relevant." I feel like brands can get kind of monotonous, so I wanted to refresh everything. Moving forward, the plan is keep pushing the boundaries. Keep pushing new sounds and keep being an exciting label and brand.
Night Bass City