The Trance Agenda: Aidan Gowan DJ Set

The Hammer House is gone now – but in the denouement of its reign, the house shows go on. This past Saturday evening, Aidan Gowan played a 90's-00's trance DJ set in the basement of his south Oakland apartment house. With a mind to expand my coverage repertoire, I set out to find what might be offered unto me in this basement show.

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Hellish downtown traffic, unusual for the lateness of the hour. While the unwashed masses flooded out northbound from the Picklesburgh festivities, we waited in a standstill single-lane hold-up not but 30 yards from our exit; looking enviously across the median at the rapid, unrestricted movement of the northern migrants.

Few things can well up blind wrath within me like metro traffic.

I'm accompanied by Massi Petitta, my faithful guide through the scene. We break out of the bottleneck and slice our way up Veterans Bridge and onto the familiar, now comforting trail to Oakland while Thumpeezy plays through my Honda Accord's speakers.

We arrived in the eerily silent neighborhood at around 10:30 p.m.; a small crowd was gathered at the end of the street outside a dubious exterior basement entrance. Odds are that's where the action is.

We learned from the people gathered at the foot of the old house that the DJ set was being held in conjunction with a double birthday party. We were received graciously by our hosts and entered the basement.

Gowan conducts the table

The room was small and walled in stone, creating good acoustics. In the back behind the booth stood Aidan Gowan, Pitt student and Rochester NY native, resident at this house and our star DJ. Under the lase of the surprisingly sophisticated lighting system, around half a dozen or so people were bobbing and swaying to the classic trance sounds rumbling from the huge speakers on the floor.

Through the smooth transitions and the repetitive and gradual progression of the music, losing track of time was a given. 10:30 p.m. turned to 12:00 a.m. in the way that only dreams can turn dusk into dawn. People faded in and out of the basement throughout the peaks and valleys of the set, going up to the party upstairs or outside and back.

Around this time I took a trip to the backyard to see what was going on and chat with the people there. Sydney Fiore, one of the house's other tenants, shared some frightening information on south Oakland's lead piping issues; before she could elaborate, she was called away to take a shot at the stroke of midnight for her 21st birthday.

Another partygoer, Tom Ross, picked up where she left off. This is where journalistic integrity gets tricky and I must warn you that I cannot corroborate the following information, not only because of it being alleged, but because I myself... um... lost the recorded evidence.

I was carrying around my big 'ol tape recorder on my hip all night and used it for recording brief interviews with partygoers, but in a moment of appallingly low intellect, I tried recording the loud music being played in the basement. Because of science and tape recording and magnets and stuff, I kinda ruined the entire tape; you can only faintly hear the music at some points in the playback. We live and learn.

Back to the pipes (and according to memory), Mr. Ross alleged that many houses in Oakland had lead pipes that had never been replaced, and that allegedly some itty bitty lead flakes may or may not find their way into your next 3 a.m. glass of ice water, should you find yourself living a south Oakland house. Watch out folks. Mr. Ross advises using a Brita; wise choice Tom.

This is a story about a DJ set though, city infrastructure is not my beat. I came back to the basement and most of the crowd had dispersed, leaving a handful of the faithful, submerged in electronic sound and light. The set began to wind down after some last great peaks. Gowan took off his headphones and stepped out from the booth, but not before queuing up one last song. The iconic echoing pluck and synth choir of perhaps the most anthemic track of the trance genre, Underworld's Born Slippy (Nuxx), filled the dim blue chamber.

Gowan took the hand of his girlfriend Lydia and the final stragglers of this wild 3 hour set danced through smoke and lights in the sweet finale.

When the show was over I grabbed Aidan for a quick interview.

(BLD stands for me, AG stands for Aidan Gowan.)

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BLD: How long have you been DJ'ing?

AG: Two or three months I think.

BLD: For real? Sounded amazing for only two or three months. Have you played anywhere else that wasn't this house?

AG: This is the first time I've played in front of anybody on the decks. I did two birthday parties with stuff that I made myself and played on an Akai, like Ableton controller and the Roland drum machine. I did that like twice, but this is the first time I've done stuff that wasn't my own on the decks in front of anybody.

BLD: What got you into DJ'ing?

AG: A long time ago, probably almost a year ago, someone who had a show on WPTS played this song New Atlantis by Efdemin. It's like this ambient techno song, and I heard that for the first time and I was like this is the coolest song I've ever heard. I just went off the deep end and was listening to so much electronic stuff; I found the early 2000's trance sound and was like, "This is the greatest shit I've ever heard in my life."

BLD: Did you buy your set down there?

AG: Oh I pirated all that stuff. Well, actually not true. My family went to London, to see Lydia (of Feeble Little Horse) like a couple weeks ago. At least where we live in Pittsburgh, there's not really good record stores that have electronic music or anything. The Attic just has like an unsorted singles section. So I dug through there once, played one song I found on record there. In London I found 8 or 9 songs just by buying (records) and I was like, "This one looks awesome," or I was like "Oh I know David Forbes," for example. Like "This song's probably gonna be good, it's David Forbes." So I just bought this stuff, came home and listened to it, and was like, "Man, I really wish I had a turntable with a pitch slider on it so I could just play the record," but no, I just had to pirate it on SoulSeek.

BLD: What's the best part of DJ'ing for you?

AG: It's fun to just dance behind the decks, bounce around. And you know what's coming next, you know what to expect. This whole thing was just, I wanted to show everybody trance music. People that I almost know for a fact haven't been exposed to it, I just wanted to give them a very standard meal.

BLD: Some people tweak about playing new songs for people, but for you to have a whole set of something you know that people don't even know, that's crazy. Super respectable, love that.

AG: I've never been afraid to be like, "You gotta listen to this song dude."

BLD: What are some of your inspirations? Like what are some trance sounds you like?

AG: Mike Push, goes by many aliases. Active Sight, I played a bunch of his songs tonight. He has this very dark trance sound. I don't know if you were here when I played it, I played Strange World very early in this set. That's like probably my favorite trance song I've ever heard, by Push. It's so awesome, it's just the same melody basically the whole song, but there's so much tension in that melody that's built up and released through the simplest of things, and it works so well.

BLD: Any upcoming shows planned for the future?

AG: Not yet. Maybe we'll do Trance Agenda Volume 2.

------ (We chat offhandedly for a little bit about his hometown of Rochester NY) -----

BLD: What's the music scene like up there? Or art? Anything worthwhile?

AG: There's a couple awesome artists from Rochester, but I don't really know much about the scene. Full Body 2 is from Rochester, kind of a shoegaze sound. RX Poppy, rapper from Rochester, you probably would recognize his song that went viral on tiktok like 2 or 3 years ago. Lydia would know, RXK is from Rochester, right?

(Surprise guest) Lydia: I think so, yeah.

AG: As far as I know that's about it from Rochester.

BLD: Local heroes holding it down, they're important.

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At around 2 a.m. I collected Massi and delivered one of his friends back to his apartment like one of those repetitive escort side missions in a Ubisoft game, but it's always a pleasure to make new friends. If you made it this far into the article I applaud you.

Go out into the city, go into new neighborhoods. Show up to events you know very little about. Show up to events you normally wouldn't. Bring a friend, or maybe test your social limits and go solo. Dance to the music. Sing with strangers. Make merry. Choose life. Don't let your mates tie you to the railroad tracks.

Luv u.

-Andersen Beck Founder, Reporter