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‘Riiiiiiinngggg, Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnngggggg, Riiiiiiiinnnggg’ ‘Drip… drip…drip…’ these are the sounds you’ll hear distantly in the dark. a phone call, a summons. an invitation…
“Pick up…”
If you so choose to brave the corner and see, you’ll be greeted with an enveloping sound of the playing rhythm. The gathering of people with the lights flashing in time to the thrumming of the bassline. ETHOS…
In terribly few words it is a parking garage-themed music venue.
But what ETHOS was… indescribable. At least it was for me but I’ll do my best to share with you a glimpse of what it was like.
Why a parking garage? That’s due to it being a homage to a memory of my own past. Where music was played within the parking garage from car sound systems echoing and resonating through the empty spaces, thus creating sounds unlike anything I’ve experienced prior. It was cool, it was edgy, it was back of the neck hair prickling. It made you feel alive.
That original experience I had was gone. That memory at least and the feeling that remained was buried. That is, until a spark of awe happened, GhostClub. I was already going to Rave events for a bit, places of fondness were MONOLITH, Techno Tuesday, OBELISK, Dieselworks, Shelter, and Loner. While some operate still now many have since gone away. There were hushed talks about a Japanese Club called Ghostclub and making a sort of pilgrimage on specific weekends during 2020-21 where you’d go to Shelter, Loner, then stay up the remainder of the night, into the early hours of the morning to do one last join war to get into GhostClub. Needless to say, I made that pilgrimage, and more than once. Sleep-deprived and doe-eyed, I made my way through the experience of Ghostclub. It felt crisp and intentional, the walk and exploration making me experience those same feelings that I had in that garage before. Feelings like, this is cool, this is edgy.
When I had finally entered that elevator, I saw voiceless beings swaying and dancing to techno, lights illuminating the space to the thrumming of the crowd’s single unified beat. The hairs on the back of my neck raised, the feeling was back, and the inspiration struck. I need to have this memory back in my own way. So I did, I set to work on making something resembling what my memories were, and also the feelings I got from Ghostclub to come back again. I wasn’t looking to make a “Ghostclub-like” or anything more, I was irritated that it might only be associated as such. Despite that, I added the same references to the Matrix and the phone booth. In further spite, I made a well-known ‘Mistake’. It made its own memories and helped make ETHOS what it was to become. However, I’m getting ahead of myself in this timeline. Two people were at the start of it all, many came afterward, and all due to a friendship and a misunderstanding. Blackoutboi and 2mugi, the two who would stay with me throughout and encourage me to partake in some of the wildest years I’ve experienced in such a strange time. They stumbled into ETHOS with me and we watched a few videos on the CRT’s that I had added. It was a fully set up venue already, with no name to itself yet. Later Blackoutboi would tell me, in their excitement, leaking some screenshots to someone named Snax who wanted to play at ETHOS.
Once Snax got word of ETHOS, they were going to do whatever it took to be able to play there. Thus began ETHOS first pop up, and one that lasted for 9 hours. Hearing and letting anyone who asked line up to play, because I didn’t think it would ever happen again made it one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. I knew nothing of the etiquette or the established quid pro quo of running a “club venue” and that was the beauty of it all. I didn’t run it any differently than the first pop up. If you asked you could play. Truth be told it upset some people that they were the ones to pull together an event night because they thought it operated like how most of the other clubs went and I just kept it all the same standard. If you asked and were nice about it. You would play. We would promote it we would make posters we would make sure to get it all working, and we had fun.
This model would even go into multiple time zones and would allow people all across the globe to play in the same space. I’ve heard ETHOS be a bridge between the two dominant event times of NA and JP which is wild of a concept to me but it was true that we were having people all across the world play at times that were previously not played at. I’m Digressing now. The remainder of this story is filled with these events and openness. I truly feel it ETHOS lived up to its name for the community at the time. The name btw being inspired by the root of the word and Guiding belief in Character and the power of music to drive emotions, behaviors, and morals. That is what I was seeking to share from my memories of the parking garage of my past.
As times move on, A lot of personal changes have ensued and a lot of Hiatus. I didn’t feel I was able to bring back what once was not to any sort of genuine honest capacity and discussed it in length with my friends about the future of ETHOS. We decided on it being a chapter closed, and the call has ended…
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